Shetland Islands, Scotland
Foreign and yearning to adapt in my ancestral Scottish landscape, I couldn't escape the truth that I didn't belong there.
Can materials connect me to place?
I spent weeks alone in Shetland, knitting a wool shawl with raw fleece still carrying lichen, dirt, and peat. I made a Skekler hat from straw, the trickster of local guising tradition.
But I was tricking myself. This creature, part wool, part straw, & part longing wasn't a bridge to belonging. It was a costume.
I can't knit myself into belonging. Sometimes being foreign is the truth and the yearning itself is what I carry home.
performance
Photographs by Sean Sweeney