'FACES OF HOPE, stories of immigrations' (LICA NADE, migrantske priče)

At the moment, I am reading different articles and also facing my own experience as an immigrant to prepare this exhibition: 'FACES OF HOPE, stories of immigration'. When someone asks me about the way I get so many ideas, I just say: "well, I am an immigrant, so those are few of the large number of impressions that I have from my experience".

Something is definitely sure: to live in Europe doesn´t mean to live in a paradise (which is meant from the outside), and also, we bring with us our own paradise/hell. Many feelings struggle my everyday life in all psychological levels, even grasping the spiritual one, which is beyond anything I have learned since I was born. In the experience of immigration, we are, so to speak, aware of everything as never before. Yes, even of the tiniest detail, not because it is just new, but rather because everything is unexpectedly strange for us. Through the process to make own the strange, we are somehow forced to choose ourselves every single time we have to re-learn something, even regarding what to feel. Imagine that we have also to express feelings in a language that doesn't sound familiar. Finally, we change that far that we become foreigners in our own origin. We are not 'snobs' as someone may consider us without knowing what this experience is. It is just the normal consequence of our survival drive, which sets us in the awareness of ourselves regarding the who that we would become throughout this living process. It is a meditation for real.

      

VAZ