Foreign Return On art and inhabitation

How do you inhabit spaces that were never built for you? Can you find home somewhere you were never supposed to belong? As a child, Neha Kale migrated from India to the outer reaches of Perth, an ancestral house, a colonial house in Goa, lingering in her memory. It sparked a life of global movement and flux. Mixing personal narrative with art and cultural criticism, Foreign Return explores the myth of the suburbs, colonial inheritances, what it means to live on stolen land, and the changing ways we will need to conceive of homes and their ownership. By drawing on the works of artists such as Dayanita Singh, Ana Mendieta, Tracey Emin, Brett Whiteley and Danie Mellor, she overturns the legacies of belonging that entrap us and searches for a language of home that can speak to a fractured world.

NEHA KALE is a widely acclaimed writer whose work spans criticism, journalism and essay. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, SBS, The Sydney Morning Herald, ArtReview, Vogue, ABC, Griffith Review, among many others. She is the former editor of VAULT magazine and editor-at-large of Art Guide Australia. Kale has been recognised by a Faber Scholarship, was twice highly commended in the Ann Moyal Fellowship and was part of a team nominated for a Walkley Foundation Media Prize. She has been awarded residencies at Bundanon and Varuna and has presented her work widely.