Raisa Raquel Durandi
Keywords: The third space, Migration, Ambiguity
As a 1.5 migrant – someone who migrated as a child – I grew up in a Swiss-Brazilian household, a space shaped by two very different worldviews, never fully one or the other, always both simultaneously and neither. I take as my topic not the search for what was or could have been, but the sober reality of a bicultural existence anchored in contradictions. My project takes place within the context of German-speaking Switzerland, a highly structured, organised and individualistic society. Through photography, collage, and assemblage, I deconstruct and reconstruct the bicultural domestic interior as a site of identity formation.
I began by building a visual inventory of the stacked and scattered objects, mounted surfaces, and architectural structures of my childhood home, where my parents still reside. This repetitive act brought a calm sense of control. Each object served as a point of orientation, an anchor through which to visually navigate my topic.
The cutting out is a physical, embodied act of isolating objects and stripping them from their surroundings. I then used reassembly as an act of meaning-making, creating a new order according to a logic drawn from my experience within bi-cultural space. This resulted in a visual construction of The Third Space, a concept coined by Homi K. Bhabha.
Applying this same logic to public space and building facades, I reflect on how identity is shaped not only within the domestic interior, but also by the system of integration in Swiss society. Together, the two scales – private and public, intimate and institutional – navigate a space defined by perpetual negotiation.
Through this project I have come to understand that the confusion evoked by such an upbringing, once experienced as fractured, is not a deficiency to be reconciled. Instead, when reframed and embraced, it can serve as a valuable tool for existing in full beyond reductionist frameworks.
