To return to departure reflects on displacement, collective memory, and desire through two large-scale video projects. Being exhibited together for the first time, Another Country and The Journey West address deeply vulnerable, personal narratives as starting points for unpacking the layered complexities of diasporic experiences.

In late-August 2004, Abedar Kamgari began moving west. She traveled with her mother by train and ferry at the start of the journey that eventually brought her to Toronto in 2006 and to Hamilton in 2012. The Journey West is a 27-hour, durational performance-for-video and creative retelling of Abedar’s experience as a refugee and immigrant, completed on the thirteenth anniversary of her initial departure. Walking the 87-kilometre distance from Toronto to Hamilton, traversing the land between her two adopted hometowns, she evokes memories of this formative passage as fixed understandings of time, place, and the self fall away. With Another Country, Abedar takes up her parents and grandparents’ hazy and nostalgic recollections as directions to significant sites in her family’s history. The result is a fragmented and meandering search across Iran’s Kurdistan and Fars provinces, accompanied by a site-specific performance for-camera on top of Abidar Mountain.

Both projects perform a desire for relationships with people, places, and land — however complicated or futile. Through thoughtful juxtaposition of archival materials shown alongside the videos, Abedar points to the ongoing nature of diaspora, displacement, and evolving notions of shared cultural heritage.

The artist acknowledges the funding support of the Canada Council for the Arts.