Ground floor Living Hub, City Library
Refugee Journeys: A Sense of Nelson
All are welcome to attend this multisensory exhibition exploring place-attachment and wellbeing in refugee resettlement.
Through everyday sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures and other multisensory experiences, individuals familiarise themselves with the unique characteristics of their surroundings and form meaningful emotional connections to specific landmarks, people, objects, traditions, and ways of life. These people-place relationships are often severed during forced displacement, leading many refugees to feel a sense of loss and disorientation which can negatively impact upon their health and wellbeing.
As part of Amber Kale’s Nelson-based PhD research, she facilitated a painting project with female former refugees to explore how building new multisensory attachments to places of settlement can enable displaced individuals to regain a sense of safety and happiness during a tumultuous time in their lives. Through a series of interviews, map-making activities, and painting workshops, twelve girls and women from Myanmar’s Chin and Kayan communities shared their experiences of places that they felt attached to in Nelson. This exhibition showcases their paintings, offering the wider New Zealand society a chance to experience Nelson from a different perspective and to consider how unique senses and places affect their own emotional and mental health and their ability to lead happy, healthy, and productive lives. Place-attachment is not currently acknowledged as vital part of the New Zealand refugee resettlement process; however, Amber argues that building emotional connections to one’s surroundings is central to constructing a sense of identity and belonging in the world and enhancing individual, social, and environmental wellbeing.
Amber will host a public talk about the exhibition on Tuesday 26th November at 5.30pm.
Public Talk: 5.30pm, Tuesday 26th November, Ground Floor Living Hub, City Library
Exhibition Location: Ground floor, Dunedin City Library
230 Moray place, Dunedin 9016
Exhibition Dates: Tuesday 26th November – Tuesday 3rd December