In Unit 2, I focused on the painful aspects of my experience—separation, difficulty integrating into a new culture, broken and rebuilt interpersonal relationships, uncontrollable surroundings, and the instability of inner subjectivity. The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. How do people in the same situation as me view the changes in their lives, and how do they cope with the anxiety of an identity that goes nowhere? Although my works are more about my own experiences and feelings, responding to unfamiliar fields under the same topic is also necessary to broaden my horizons.
With these themes in mind, I chose the Migration Museum located in Lewisham as the focus of my research. I was initially excited because Lewisham is not far from where I live in Peckham. However, just as I was preparing to visit, I discovered that the Migration Museum’s temporary location in Lewisham closed on March 30, 2025. This was unfortunate, but fortunately, the museum's website offers a wealth of information that allowed me to continue my research remotely.
I found a blog post from 2019 about Room to Breathe, a project by the New Art Studio.During their residency, the New Art Studio transformed part of the Migration Museum into a gallery space, showcasing past and current artworks created by a diverse group of people from different backgrounds and artistic interests. The blog discusses key aspects of art therapy practice through a series of questions and answers. I have excerpted some of the most relevant insights:
Art therapy among disadvantaged groups such as asylum seekers and refugees is recognised as a powerful tool to help overcome the trauma that exile and displacement cause.
In the context of migration, art therapy can be an extremely empowering process through which individuals develop and sustain resilience. Creativity is essential for asylum seekers: when all is lost, imagination becomes the only true place of freedom.
The process of art-making demystifies psychotherapy and destigmatises the asylum experience. The need to make a mark becomes urgent when one’s life has been under threat—it is a way to affirm one’s existence.
I hadn't thought of using the word resilience until now. In the context of migration, resilience is not merely the ability to endure displacement and instability; it is an act of creative resistance against erasure and loss. In migration discourse, resilience is often framed as the individual's capacity to adapt and survive despite displacement, loss, and systemic marginalization. However, contemporary critical theories urge a rethinking of resilience—not merely as personal strength, but as a relational, cultural, and political process. Rather than celebrating resilience as heroic endurance, scholars such as Sara Ahmed emphasize the structural conditions that demand resilience in the first place, questioning why certain bodies are expected to withstand precarity and trauma.
Maybe people need to approach resilience not as a naturalized trait but as an active, negotiated process shaped by historical violence, social displacement, and the persistent search for belonging. In this context, it’s necessary to find a method of survival and resistance: a space where fragmented identities can be reconstructed, where memory and loss are given form, and where marginalized narratives can assert visibility. In my work, resilience is not framed as stoic endurance, but as an ongoing practice of reimagining home, reclaiming voice, and resisting invisibility.
This blog has opened up the possibility of new keywords for me, a new perspective, I found that art practice for migrant individuals functions not only as a means of healing trauma but also as a form of political engagement: it challenges why certain bodies must endure greater “resilience pressure,” and, by opening up art spaces, makes the memories and voices of different cultures visible and tangible within the fissures. This “creative resistance” not only helps individuals rebuild a sense of belonging at sites of cultural disjunction but also offers a new paradigm for cross-cultural dialogue.