Davies, S., 2025.

Dreaming the Between: an arts-based exploration into the effects of migration on our memory and imagination

Dreaming the Between: an arts-based exploration into the effects of migration on our
memory and imagination
Section: Migration and Cultural Memory

My arts-based research examines the intersection of creativity, migrant subjectivity formation and narratives of belonging. As a first-generation Swedish migrant in the UK, I explore how memories of home, issues with belonging, self-uncertainty manifest in my artworks. Building on previous PhD research (Davies, 2024) I investigate how art practice, particularly the emotional and physical touch when making art, both reveals and counteracts self-uncertainty linked with migration and diaspora. In current research I examine how these representations of self-uncertainty, contribute to a diasporic imaginary (Axel, 1999, Quayson, 2013, Bader et.al. 2019), that challenges traditional notions of national identity and belonging.

This paper focuses on the process of making a body of work that uses a historic collection of photographic portraits from Platt Hall, Manchester Art Gallery, exploring migration's effect on our memory, imagination and relationship with place. Through my art practice, I engage in 'embodied dreaming' (Bollas, 1999; Gaffney, 2019), drawing out the experiences of migration that only the body knows. Rooted in psychoanalytic theory, embodied dreaming proposes that the unconscious mind reveals itself through the body, manifesting in physical sensations, movements, and intuitive mark-making (Bollas, 1999). I explore how specific photographs or details within them resonate with me--how I see myself in them--and how I use my art practice to explore this connectivity. Uncovering the subconscious aspects of migrant and diasporic experience--of being located between languages, histories, and cultures, the approach reveals a fragmented and incomplete 'I' of someone living a borderland life between cultures (Bhabha, 1994).

Dr Sara Davies
Lecturer in Contextualising Practice
Manchester School of Art
Manchester Metropolitan University
sara.davies@mmu.ac.uk

Axel, B.K (2020) 'The Diasporic Imaginary', Public Culture, 14(2), pp. 411-428.
Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture, New York, Routledge
Bollas, C. (1999) The Mystery of Things. London: Routledge
Davies, S. (2024) Creating Images of Belonging through Diasporic Touch. Doctoral Thesis:
Manchester Metropolitan University, https://e-
space.mmu.ac.uk/634543/1/290424SaraKristinaDaviesCreatingImagesofBelongingThrough
DiasporicTouchamendmentscopy.pdf
Gaffney, S. (2019) Embodied Dreaming as a sculptural practice informed by an idea in the
psychoanalytical writings of Christopher Bollas. Doctoral thesis: University of Huddersfield,
https://mmu.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1230764692
Bader et.al. (2019) Diasporic Imaginaries: Multiple Senses of Belonging. Paris: Research Group
Art Production and Art Theory in the Age of Global Migration.
Quayson, A. (2013) 'Postcolonialism and the Diasporic Imaginary' in: A. Quayson & G.