The Urban Nation - Fresh A.I.R. artistic residency #6 was intended to replace common stereotypical patterns of portrayal of migrants with new approaches to a topic that is frequently instrumentalised in politics and the media. This means not only talking about migrants, but also including the experiences of migrants and thus making migrant life worlds tangible.

“Rooms” deals with the theme of migration observed in private and public interiors. The work looks at the Romanian immigrant community inhabiting the city, the spaces they occupy and appropriate, and the objects that they surround themselves with. These spaces and the life that they contain are then painstakingly surveyed, documented and recreated through 1:20 paper models and collages.

At the centre of the work lies “Pia Roma”, a Romanian shop in Friedenau that is the centre of the Romanian community in that area and manifests a deep sense of origin for the Romanian diaspora. The scale of the domestic interior, represented by the two private interiors of Maria and Toni, makes the liminal identity of the migrant more visible through a unique set of tangible and intangible signifiers. The series of 6 collages focuses more clearly on the emotionally charged objects and juxtaposes them with the lived reality of an existence in a foreign country.

The project situates the model and the act of making as a tool for engagement, observation and documentation; a slow, time-based method that has the potential to manifest a deep participation in the life of place and people often ignored and made invisible by wider society.