This painting embodies my emigration to Piemonte, Italy. The feeling of embracing a new landscape to call home, and the solitude that comes with it. Stripped of all my guards, exposed to a new culture, a new language I don’t yet possess which distance me from my neighbors. In order to fall in love with my new surroundings I had to reinvent the meaning of ‘home’. Home is where the heart is, and I take my heart wherever I go. But it also comes with insecurities, do my new neighbors except my presence? will they let me in to their hearts? That fear comes from what I’ve seen in my country of birth, The Netherlands. People who fled their country because of war, come there in hope for a saver place to raise their children, but face a crowd of protesters who hate them for who they are. As if they’re afraid of colonization, just like the western civilisation did to them in history. And meanwhile these white people still travel the world. And I’m one of them.
