Transient Borders ~

2016

"I feel disinherited even from my childhood memories, so that I stand before you as a writer without any ground of being out of which to write: really blown about from country to country, culture to culture until I feel – until I am – Nothing."
— Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Disinheritance

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This piece is rooted in an old map of Paris. It serves as both a literal and metaphorical foundation — a starting point for a meditation on place, identity, and belonging.

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Through the slow, meditative act of stitching, I trace and dissolve the boundaries that once rigidly divided this map. Borders — so often seen as fixed, defining, territorial — are rendered impermanent, porous, and shifting. Each thread is a quiet defiance of permanence. Each stitch unravels certainty.

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This work reflects on the artificial nature of boundaries: how they are drawn and redrawn, how they claim authority over land, over identity, over memory. Yet they are ultimately fragile — subject to time, erosion, and human fallibility.

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Inspired by Jhabvala’s words, this piece speaks to the feeling of disinheritance — of not fully belonging to any one place or narrative. Of drifting between spaces and cultures, and making peace with that in-betweenness. It’s about the liminality of identity, the quiet dissolving of lines, and the possibility of something new emerging from the uncharted spaces in between.