Memories of Material Home: Refugee Women’s Depiction of Absent Objects

Homing, a desire to create a place as one’s home, is not limited to the structure of a place of dwelling, nor is it translated into the concept of homeland. ‘Home’ encompasses a wide array of objects, spaces, practices, politics and individuals. The relationship among these elements is disrupted when one is displaced through migration from one’s home country or a country one calls ‘home.’ Based on a recent art project with a group of Syrian, Iranian, Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish women in Izmir, Turkey, this chapter argues that the link between home and memory must be critically reflected upon in order to offer novel ways of thinking about home and homing desire, as well as to expand the impact of any research with refugees. Refugee women construct home in Turkey through temporariness, precarious employment and fleeting encounters. In this chapter, findings of interviews that were conducted in art workshops with 32 refugee women, narratives of ‘objects of home,’ will be discussed. The focus of the chapter is on the importance of materiality in its absence in women’s construction of home in displacement. I argue that art methods have the potential to enhance research around materialities as they manifest materiality through the force of memory. Finally, the chapter argues for a new approach to analysing home, that links art to materiality, home and memory.