Lucy Saephan

• What is your personal definition of home?- What experiences have influenced/continue to influence and shape your understanding of home, belonging, and safety? Are there any core memories?
  
  

I was lucky enough to grow up on 23rd Ave and East 22nd St where a half dozen of Iu Mien families lived in the 90s. A core memory that seem to extend the length of whole summer breaks. Iu Mien kids feeling safe, playing, foraging the in the exact same fashion as our parents back in the Thailand refugees or remote mountain villages in Laos, but only transported to the urban inner-city neighborhood of East Oakland.

• What particular place(s) do you feel at home, deeply connected and safe at? (Some examples are a community center, a specific park, a certain market or store, an event/gathering)

Lao and Hmong grocery stores feel like home because they have all the familiar foods and home decor I grew up with. So it feel nostalgic to see and be around these items.

• What parts of your personal/family/collective histories help you feel grounded in (or disconnected to) your idea and understanding of home? - When/if you feel disconnected to your cultural community, where do you go and/or what do you do to feel safe and accepted?

Long-term, generational displacement from physical homeland has helped me feel grounded in the idea and understanding of home as a place that lives within the people. While there is always a yearning for a homeland that doesn't exist and it feels like a loss, a disconnect to land, I feel connection through my cultural community. Home is more of a communal space that is held through families and community, the sharing of foods, the telling of stories, and the preservation of rituals and ceremonies.

• What aspects of your identity do you feel most connected to? - What parts feel the most challenging to feel connected to and how does this impact your understanding of home and belonging?

I feel most connected to my ethnic and cultural identity. The parts I feel most challenging to feel connected to are traditions rooted in patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and gender-based violence. It makes it difficult to show up as my whole self in cultural community space and family spaces.

• Time isn’t linear–spiritually speaking, we carry our ancestors and descendants with us everyday. How do you hope to contribute to the healing, growth, and transformation of your people’s collective understanding of home, place, and belonging? Through your art, how do you hope to help your ancestors and descendants find home and feel + know safety?

I hope to contribute to the healing, growth, and transformation of our people's collective understanding of home, place, and belonging by sharing my personal experiences through my creative works. By being as authentic, vulnerable, and open as I can through my art, I hope it inspires other folks to feel that they can do the same. They can explore and create art to help them express their experiences.

• What role does art/creativity play in your life? Is this connected to your journey of belonging? If yes, how?

I loved art as a kid, but as I got older there was less opportunities for that. As a young adult exploring more art spaces and learning more about the history and cultures of other people through their art got me feeling the absence of that representation, exploration, and expression in my own life and in my community. So I started adding small amount of art back into my life. I feel like the more I create, the more I learn about myself.

• What is one dream you have for your community?

One dream for my community is to feel love, acceptance, and support from each other, so we can heal and create together.

• How has this project influenced your understanding of community, belonging, home and/or safety?

The project has shown me that I get to define what community, belonging, home, and safety mean to me. That these things change over time and it's okay to have different variations existing at the same time.