The Meaning is as Fragile as the Flesh Between Us.

The following works explore meaning making and identity formation through written, spoken, and visual language. Starting from my own bi-cultural experience as a second generation Lebanese American, I examine what it means to be cut off from my family's languages and accents and how that has impacted the ways I have been able to engage with my culture(s) and the family mythologies and histories that have shaped who I am. Stuart Hall says that “Culture is about ‘shared meanings’.” It is from this standpoint that I set out to discover the myriad meanings that have been missing from my understanding. Years of cultural assimilation and linguistic imperialism have altered the ways that I am able to verbally engage with my Lebanese family and the American culture I was brought up in; this is the experience of being neither here nor there, always hovering somewhere inside the dense fog we call identity. This project is framed around my experience as an English only speaker who grew up watching, in real time, the ways cultural assimilation worked quickly to erase the Levantine Arabic language that arrived with my paternal family when they emigrated from Lebanon in the 1970’s, and how accent bias worked to delete the nuanced Appalachian English that my maternal family brought to Massachusetts from the mountains of West Virginia. Through the use of text, projections, collaged elements, shadow boxes, photography and translated song lyrics, I attempt to grasp the diaphanous meanings and accents that have been redacted from the mouths and memories of my family using the New England English language I am fluent in.