'Peaceable Kingdom'

'Peaceable Kingdom' is a term I came across starting to investigate how people could fit into my pieces of work to build a story, thinking about the idea of unity between people of different places, animals and objects that have been given a spirit, as well as nature itself and places around the world.

'The expression peaceable kingdom, in the sense of a state of harmony among all creatures as prophesied in the Book of Isaiah, 11:1-9'

I felt this was a beautiful title for a piece of work, and found artists that have titled their works after this expression, including Edward Hicks' paintings and John Drysdale's photography book. To my surprise, I also found ideas within these two pieces, although very different, were both ones I was conscious of and thinking about through my own exploration:

Edward Hicks' made sixty-two 'Peaceable Kingdom' paintings, in which we see the representation of coexistence not only between animals and people but also between people themselves - native Indians and new settlers who live together after signing a treaty. I have thought about the merging of worlds of indigenous and 'outsiders', and the relationship between nature and the man-made, questioning the value of natural objects and ephemerally against the importance of sentimental objects and materiality. I am questioning what it would be like, for example after reading an article in National Geographic, if the natural world of the Awa Tribe in the Amazon were to collide and flood into the world of a city person living in an apartment, and also into the palace of a princess. I have started to think about what the encounter and experience would be like, how characters or figures would act or react within the images I produce, what is the best way of telling this story, through a single still image or a sequence of images.

Furthermore, this led to thoughts about my own childhood surrounding what a sense of belonging feels like. It made me think about being mixed race and having grown up thinking about how I am from three cultures: Indian, English and Japanese, which both gave me a grounding but also a strong feeling of loss, as I never felt like I fit into or connected with any of these three 'sides' of myself, as well as further feeling like I didn't fit in the world around me. I grew up not knowing my Japanese side, felt isolated in English schools even though this is where I grew up, and did not feel connected with my Indian heritage even at home as a result. I felt this relates visually to the ideas of different people from different environments around the world flooding into each others lives, filling this space of separation, and instead encouraging a sense of exploration and excitement that is an identifiable trait of childhood experience. In a way, it is an attempt to heal my thoughts of always feeling like I need to fit into certain categories, as well as connecting parts of stories from my family's heritage together. From these thoughts, I can conclude that for me, what creates a sense of home and belonging, is not the location or the architecture of a home itself, but rather the things within it that become memorable that you attached yourself to. This includes nature (as a home we are all connected through), sentimental objects (that become personal comfort charms and memories of moments that may or may not be attached to my cultures) and the people (in my case being my close family). Article on sense of home: https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-psychology-behind-instilling-a-sense-of-home#1

Moving onto John Drysdale's photographs, they show a beautiful, almost haven-like fantastical relationship between animals and often children. This is something I have been attracted to seeing photographs of in the National Geographic magazine of people in the Awa Tribe who take in monkeys as family, letting them rest on their heads so that they look like they become a part of the humans' hair. I greatly admire the way these relationships are visually represented through small moments of interactions and emotion. In relation to my own project, I would love to expand on my ideas of turned stuffed plushie animals into real creatures with spirits, into how people can have relationships with other man-made objects also, probably referring back to the questionnaire and starting to build stories through children characters.

I think what I want to do through my project is bring warmth and comfort to and through showing the innocence of primal childhood traits, and exploring a speculative question of what it would be like if worlds of people across the world flood into each other, joining and appreciating different lifestyles and cultures, through exploring environments and the link between materiality of sentimental objects and nature as a universal home and the importance of children's interactions with both.

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