HOMELAND (2022-23)

Homeland, an exhibition that follows an 18-month residency of photographer and visual artist Paulina Korobkiewicz, addresses themes of political identity, belonging, memory and representation among migrant communities in West Bromwich and Hyson Green, with a specific focus, but not limited to, Polish migrant communities. Throughout the residency, Korobkiewicz familiarised herself with these areas and established relationships with members of the migrant communities, initiating dialogues and participating in local celebrations and events, researching and creating a contemporary portrait of those places.

The project focuses on the visibility of the communities within these areas, examining how migrants have influenced the urban landscape while also contributing to and interacting with these diverse communities in their current homes. The photographs depict the people, the geometries and shapes of these multicultural towns, the fusion of nostalgia for home, and the present memories, realities and connections.

Korobkiewicz’s residency contributed to the broader research project Post-Socialist Britain?: Memory, Representation and Political Identity amongst German, Polish and Ukrainian Immigrants in the UK, as part of which she attended and observed a series of photography workshops used as a research method to give migrants a platform to share their experiences through photography.

Accompanying Korobkiewicz’s work, Homeland exhibition also includes photographic projects from Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak, Yuxi Hou, Ismail Khokon, and Marcin Forys, participants of the Central European Photography Club, with whom she worked closely during her residency, through mentoring and sharing experiences.

This project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and it is part of a collaborative project with the University of Birmingham and Nottingham Trent University. The exhibition is curated by Rafailia Thiraiou.

2023 solo exhibition Homeland, with contributions from Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak, Yuxi Hou, Ismail Khokon, Marcin Forys and the Central Eastern European Photography Club participants, Centrala Space, Birmingham, and Surface Gallery, Nottingham, UK

Yuxi Hou

Laolao’s Suitcase
This project features photographs Yuxi Hou took of objects her grandmother brought on her journey from China to England. Old radios, rosemary trees, Chinese herbal medicine in plastic containers, and empty orange juice bottles. By shedding light on these domestic objects, she attempts to bridge the old and the new, home and afar, familiar and unfamiliar.
This project documents her migration journey and aims to reflect beyond her individual experience. It is a story of home and memories. Her grandmother's ID photos from her teenage years, needles, combs. These objects capture her faith and her philosophy of life. Through this work, she aims to reconstruct and foster a cross-generation, cross-cultural dialogue between us.
Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak

Rememories
‘Rememories’ is a project exploring the home space as an essential element in the process of forming one's own identity as an immigrant. This work is a record of building their home, where her new story and a nostalgic journey to her childhood take place simultaneously.
The home space itself is a record of their entire life journey. It holds memories from their home country, events and moments that shaped them. She finds traces of Polish tradition in the objects around her and her everyday behaviours. Her home allows her to maintain a cultural and emotional connection with her home country, provides a sense of security and evokes reflection.
Welcoming their daughter, experiencing her childhood and accompanying her in her development transported her back to when she was a child. Raising her makes her reflect on Polish culture and become aware of its presence within her home environment. It allows her to reconnect with her roots. She returns, more consciously, to tradition, offering her child an identity while trying to build intergenerational bonds and bridges. She revisits her childhood memories for her daughter while shaping her own in another country and another reality.
Four houses, four different memories. What glues them together is their story of creating a home. The collage form allows her to show how the memory of places, tradition, past and present intertwine, becoming a bridge between the past and the present.
Ismail Khokon

At the crossroads
The project, titled ‘At the crossroads’, will shine a light on the experiences of immigrants in Nottingham, empowering and giving a public voice to individuals within these communities. Through this project, he is trying to understand people’s personal experiences of mental health during political, social and environmental upheaval in their home countries, looking at current events. He believes that during this time of global uncertainty, his work can connect people from Nottingham’s immigrant communities whose mental well-being has been or is at that time affected by current affairs in their home countries, helping to build an essential network for support and unity. It is his current ongoing project funded by Arts Council England.
Marcin Forys

Prim Gravity
‘Prism Gravity’ is a series of photographs taken in Hyson Green by Marcin Forys, a Polish photographer based in Nottingham. This photographic series explores the heart of Hyson Green through compelling portraits of people he met; Forys explores this vibrant community's intricate interplay of perspectives, origins, and diversity.
The project's name, ‘Prism Gravity,’ underscores the idea that our viewpoints are shaped by our unique prisms, influenced by our cultures, birthplaces, and life experiences. Forys' lens documents the beauty in this diversity, celebrating the human spirit while challenging preconceptions.
‘Prism Gravity’ is a visual journey into a world where every photograph tells a story and every face reflects a unique facet of our shared humanity.