Diane Fellows

         I was born in Queens, New York, and spent my formative years in Seoul, South Korea, Europe, and Ireland before returning to the New York area during my teens. The opportunity to live in global ports was due to my father’s work as an airline navigator from the 1960s to 1970s. Living abroad also heightened a connection to my family’s experience of mid-20th century historic events because of the geographic proximity to those events and the ability to visit surviving relatives.

        As the daughter of a refugee (underground Berlin, WWII), the inter-generational experience of displacement often directs one’s life. The effect of my parent’s experience on her perception of the world, and her children’s perception of their world, is often more nuanced than overtly evident. However, causal events remembered by my mother and told to me are vivid and visceral experiences of a lasting impression.

       I believe that the experience of displacement and refuge is not bound by cultural or social identities, and is not bound to any specific historic or contemporary moment. Shaped by political frameworks, the experience of displacement, anywhere, for any individual, is a profound betrayal with consequences that filter through each successive generation. Displacement is simply untenable. It is our collective crime against our collective humanity.

         Through photography, films, installations, prose and paintings, I explore narrative constructions of displacement that are often shaped by inference. These narratives are multi-scalar: from the very personal to public conditions. Visual and cinematic processes have their own grammar, textures, tones, sounds, leading me often to unfamiliar landscapes. That journey, through unexpected spaces, is liberating and transformative. I strive for these processes to engage the viewer in similar contemplative moments.