Hannah Hertrich BFA General Fine Arts Thesis Spring 2016
Growing up between two distinct cultures, Germany and America, I often combat sensations of displacement and feeling torn between divergent cultural values and the expectations inherent in what it means to be from a nation. This thesis project has become a journey of understanding and coming to terms with the tensions experienced as a transnational being. Using the form of the chair as a metaphorical indicator for the self I document my process of defeating the confines of categorical binary thinking and rejecting the notion of a homogenous fixed nation. As a result I find a home for my reality within the concept of transnationalism and the idea of a third culture. Each chair is a self portrait that portrays my personal change in perspective from being torn between two distinct nations (Chairs 1) to finding comfort in the dance between the two and the conglomerate of the whole (Chairs 2).