Gae

The [Dis]embodied Home

Matildah Maboyane

BArch Hons 2021

Supervisors:
Unit Leader: Thireshen Govender
Unit Leader: Jiaxin Gong
Unit Tutor: Sarah Harding

UNIT 14^︎︎︎
Rogue Economies - Trade Roots: HOME

"Where are you from?"
This may be a simple question to answer for some. For me, I am from a variety of places, yet I am only a local or, more accurately, at home in a selected handful. Since birth, I've been moving from house to home with my home morphing into rooms and apartments over the years. So, where is my home?

In African cities, the question, "Where do you come from?" or "Where is your home?" is loaded with multiple meanings, complex social hierarchies, and historical encumbrances. Whether posed to second or third generation urbanites, rural migrant workers, immigrants, or the Diaspora living outside of Africa (Kihato, C: 2013). Throughout my body of work I explore and seek to understand the spatial projections of home for someone who is constantly on the move, which begin to reveal the complexities in the practices of homemaking, particularly in the context of the body that is in a perpetual state of flux that appears to be contained by our understanding of our infrastructure/architecture.

My reading of home is embedded in oral history (Sereto) and this body of work suggests that home is much more than just one home occupied; it is the sequencing of those homes that make up home. As one moves through multiple homes, a certain cultural richness is lost. I argue that migration should not be perceived as an act that displaces you but rather a home that will support and advance people’s migratory impulses and instincts to move towards opportunity while navigating risk and new landscapes. So, a new way of being at home or making a home that allows for movement without sacrificing cultural infrastructural richness.

Keywords:
Homemaking, Move, Multiple, Migratory

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