THE CONCEPT – NATIONAL IDENTITY
“Wherever we go, on our face we wear our land. Whatever we do, in the soles of our shoes, in the timber of our voice, in the texture of our skins, in the depth of our eyes, we wear our country. The wind chases after us, depositing on our lips the scent of home, the flashes of our memory, the songs of our origin.
Tahar Ben Jelloun 1994.
From the preface to Owen Logam’s book ‘Bloodlines – Vite allo Specchio’.
“Nations were the worst invention of human history” Toni Negri, Documenta 14
In the globalized world we live in, the individual can have a plurality of identities depending on his or her situation. Although globalization is opening up spatial borders either by voluntary or forced migration there are many contradictions. Identity may be one of the country we left behind or of the country in which we reside, the country of a previous generation of our family or with a continent such as Europe or Africa. Identification (or not) with a particular national or ethnic group can form the central pillar of one’s personality.
The NATIONAL IDENTITY Project seeks to explore the labels that define the idea of national identity: how people describe themselves and the signs and symbols that they use as groups or individuals to portray that identity.
The overall objective of the NATIONAL IDENTITY project is to challenge the viewer to think about how we form national identity. Selected images should communicate to the viewer national identity and how it is made up of actions, signs, symbols and environment.