Bygone Habitus

The idea of Habitus proposes that we not only inhabit physical, psychological, social and political spaces but that these have a determining effect on the way that we act, feel and see ourselves. Our very beliefs and sense of identity are pre-determined to some degree outside of our direct consciousness.

I aim to question the connection I have with my home and the school I went to in my native country, post migration. Particularly, I explore the relationship between the two buildings which formed my habitus for over a decade.

This project also seeks to explore the architecture during communism, which determined how those two structures were built. Most socialist systems exercised a form of centrally controlled development and simplified methods of construction. It is no wonder that, more than 30 years after the 1989 Revolution, the grey concrete blocks are stubborn to remain one of the most tough and treacherous legacies of communism.

In order to document this, computer generated imagery (CGI) was used to construct the apartment block and the school as a way of reclaiming those spaces from the past which are no longer ‘mine’. Furthermore, I printed the CGI sets by using a 3D printer, to obtain a miniature physical version of the buildings, which were subsequently photographer in a studio.

I believe that objects become tools in which a person’s identity is imprinted, and so the print not only acts as an object, but as a mechanism of remembrance, historical and personal.