Image/Sound/Text:
Please tick the appropriate box
This project explores who I am as an individual and how I see my place within society. I left the country of my origin, Slovakia, when I was nineteen and have now been living in England for nearly twelve years. Although I consider myself British, I never stopped thinking of myself as Slovak either. However, there have been times when I felt out of place in Slovakia and in Britain. The question I needed to ask is whether my claim to two homes and two nationalities is justified. I wanted to consider if the feeling of not fully belonging anywhere is an indicator that instead of two national identities I have none.
I decided to use an official Minority Monitoring Form in the production of this project. I modified the form so that I could fit photographs in the boxes where the ticks would normally appear. I kept the layout of the form with the text and numbers used by employers to identify and classify applicants according to which box they ticked. The numbers on the form are very significant to me. They show how people can be reduced to statistics and stripped of their status as human beings. I used passport photographs of my friends and myself to represent different segments of society. To simplify the idea, I use myself as an example of someone who fits into more than one box and only move my image across the form according to where I could fit. This is in spite of the fact that the majority of the other people on the form could be identified with several groups. The first image contains my passport picture twice, once in the section ‘White – British’ and the second time in the section ‘Other white background’. It represents me as an individual with two national identities. The second image has my photograph in the section ‘Other White background’ only. It refers to my place of birth and questions my entitlement to British citizenship. It confirms the fact that part of me is still foreign. The third image has my photograph in the section ‘White – British’. It is trying to communicate my inability to entirely identify myself with Slovak culture and way of thinking. The second and third images explore the idea of this duality and question my claim of belonging to two societies. The fourth image has my photograph in the section ‘Other’. It represents my desire to escape categorisation by society. It mocks the idea of dual nationality and two national identities.
While working on this project I also wanted to draw attention to the ways our society functions. It claims to strive towards acceptance and equality of all regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. But, by insisting on identification and categorisation of individuals according to their background, it perpetuates isolation of certain minorities. On a more personal level, I attempted to gain a deeper understanding of my position in society. I aimed to examine the notion of nationality and national identity and present the audience with the questions I face when considering these issues. I wanted to show that having dual nationality is not just a matter of deciding which passport to travel with. For me it represents a compromise and revaluation of who I am.
