Tamara Nicholson

Topological Intimacies and Acts of Building Home is a durational site-responsive and lens-based project documenting my family’s act of building home on a specific ecological site in suburban North Shore, Tāmaki Makaurau. The project invites a gentle shift in place-making narratives based on the imaginings of house and home in Aotearoa, making visible the importance of memory, history, place, space and belonging and how this forms topological intimacy in the making of a home.

The use of site-based installation and interventions become way-markers and responses to the temporal shifts, affective complexities, and ongoing productive tensions.

I employ Donna Haraway’s call to action ‘Staying with The Trouble’ to navigate the affective complexities of homemaking in contemporary times.‘Staying’ becomes a means to engage gentle feminist actions and rituals involving flowers and building materials to situate the trouble (home) as an active site of ongoing political and social tensions.