Dépaysement is a French term that encapsulates the feeling of being out of one's usual environment, disoriented yet simultaneously liberated. At its core, dépaysement challenges our perception of identity and belonging.
In this project I reconstruct the identities of people I’ve never fully known. Using facts that are known, I create a new narrative through the lens of dépaysement. In doing so, I aim to encounter questions that touch on identity, generational ties, history, and the sense of belonging.
But what does dépaysement truly mean? Is it simply a feeling of alienation, or does it delve deeper, perhaps even altering how we see ourselves and our connections to others?
Could it shift depending on the context, reshaping the way we understand our place in the world? As I reconstruct these narratives, I find myself questioning how identity is formed, how it evolves across generations, and how history shapes our sense of belonging.
In this zine, I don’t aim to provide definitive answers. Instead, I explore the questions that arise from these reconstructed identities. What happens when we reinterpret the past through the concept of dépaysement? Does our understanding of ourselves and our ancestors change, or do certain patterns persist, regardless of how we view them?
This exploration is not a straightforward journey, but rather a narrative inquiry that seeks to unravel the many layers of dépaysement. Can this feeling lead to new insights about identity and belonging, or does it distance us from the 'truth'? How does the process of reconstruction affect my perception of who I am and where I come from?
