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Home and Away - Growing up as British Asians in London
by Samina Mishra
 
     

Samina Mishra
264/1, Gulmohar Avenue
Jamia Nagar
New Delhi 110025
India
Tel: + 00 91 98116251888
http://www.sarai.net/compositions/multimedia/samina/samina/index.htm

Keywords
Home, Belonging, Identity, Memory, Cultural, Journey, City

Home and Away
is a multi-layered, multimedia work that explores the dynamics of defining one's identity. The children in Home and Away are second and third generation British Asians and belong to families that traveled to Britain from across the Indian Subcontinent ­ India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. An unfamiliar land was filled slowly with the familiar ­ objects, sounds and smells.

  Home and Away
Home and Away
Copyright © Samina Mishra
     

And so, for the first generation, it may have been easy to identify themselves as the Indian Diaspora with a comfortable division between a home left behind and a new home, between a nostalgic past and a pragmatic present. But for these children, this is the only home they have ever known - a unique combination of London's physical space and the Subcontinent's "culture". They grow up in predominantly Asian neighborhoods, speak English with an accent that is far from Asian, eat roti sabzi at home and learn hardly any Asian history at school. So, if London is Home, then it is still, in some senses, distant and away. And if the Subcontinent is Away, it is still home to many things that make up their identity.

The Home and Away exhibition is made up of digitally produced panels. The panels integrate large single images as well as selected strips from the contact sheets with text that excerpts interviews and an author's narrative. The photographs consist of portraits of the children and their families as well as street images and signage. These speak of a very strong Asian presence, both in everyday spaces as well as the exceptional, for example, the annual Baisakhi celebration in Southall, which coincided in 2003 with the opening of a new Gurdwara, the largest anywhere outside of India.


The exhibit is bound together by an edited soundtrack using voice, music and effect sounds. In one corner, there is a computer displaying an html presentation which combines all the elements of the exhibition but is a stand alone work that allows the viewer interactive freedom.

 
Artist Biography

Samina Mishra
Samina Mishra is a documentary filmmaker and media practitioner based in New Delhi. She has recently finished The House on Gulmohar Avenue, a documentary film about home and belonging, tracing the filmmaker's personal journey to understand what it can mean to be a Muslim in India today. Home and Away, a multimedia exhibition on British Asian children in London, participated in
ISEA 2004.

Her work includes Stories of Girlhood, a series of three films on the Girl Child in India, produced for Unicef, India and Adha Asman, a video about differential access to healthcare, produced for the British Council as part of the Gender Planning Training Project. She has also written Hina in the Old City, a non-fiction book with photographs on the Walled City of Delhi for children. She was the location sound recordist for the documentary film Words on Water. She has translated six children's stories from Urdu into English for The Magic Key, published by Young Zubaan, New Delhi.
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