Geographies of the Imagination

September 29, 2007

Lydia Nakashima Degarrod
Visiting Artist and Scholar 2007-08

Humans leave behind invisible lines from our wanderings that are never acknowledged in maps or atlases. They are, however, inscribed in the memories of travelers. This is particularly true in the case of foreign immigrants, who arrive every day in California bringing not only their cultural and idiosyncratic beliefs and customs, but also images of past landscapes and mental maps that facilitated their movements in their old locales. As they interact with and navigate within new environments, they create new mental maps that overlap with the old ones. These webs of overlapping maps and landscapes are important screens by which immigrants interact with the streets and roads of their new locales.

About the Geographies of the Imagination

Lydia Nakashima Degarrod created "Geographies of the Imagination" guided by her own personal history as a Chilean immigrant to the United States. This interdisciplinary project, which combines visual art and anthropology, aims at depicting the memories and internal images of migration of a group of Chilean residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. During 2007-8 Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, a visual artist and anthropologist, in collaboration with La Peña Cultural Center, and members of the Chilean community in the Bay Area, will collect stories and create maps for a multimedia installation based on personal stories of migration. The installation will consist of audio and video recordings of the Chilean narratives of migration, and maps created by Lydia Nakashima Degarrod that illustrate the affective and imaginary aspects of the journeys. This project will explore the emotional dislocation of immigration. Viewers will have an opportunity to reflect on this dislocation while calling to memory the cultural and physical landscapes of their past.

About the Project

The project involves two major types of activities: the gathering of stories about the journeys and memories of the homeland, and the making of the maps. Lydia Nakashima Degarrod will video and audio record the stories with their consent and only after rapport has been created between the participants and herself. She will create two different types of personal maps in collaboration with the participants. One set will represent the participants’ memories of the landscapes and places in their homeland and how these images re-appear in the places they live now. The second set of maps will represent participants’ journeys of migration to the San Francisco Bay Area. Both sets of maps will seek to illustrate their stories and evoke the emotional and physical aspects of participants’ memories. The map-making process will be guided in part by participants, who will have several opportunities to see and provide input on the painted maps as they are being created.

About Lydia Nakashima Degarrod

Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, PhD migrated from Chile in 1975. She earned a PhD in Anthropology and an MA in Folklore & Mythology concentrating on storytelling from the University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds an MA in Hispanic Literature, and BFA and BA degrees in Visual Arts and Philosophy from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. As a scholar she has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, a postdoctoral position at the University of Virginia, a senior scholar fellowship at Harvard University, and a visiting artist and scholar position at the University of California, Berkeley. Recently she participated in conversations with scientists, theologians and scholars about the image of humanity in the 21st century at the Fetzer /Eranos Foundation Symposium in Ascona, Switzerland. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in the United States, Chile, and Switzerland. She has received awards from the Ministry of Culture of Chile, Saint John's University, and the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

For more information please visit www.lydianakashimadegarrod.com.

Funding for this Project

This project is made possible, in part, by grants from the California Council for the Humanities as part of the Council's statewide California Stories Initiative, the Skirball Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.