About

Installation view of 101 Ways to Long for a Home, Woordfees, Stellenbosch, 2018

This site is dedicated to the artist's book installation called 101 Ways to Long for a Home by Emma Willemse. To view the diverse artworks comprising Emma Willemse's entire art practice, click here.

More on Emma Willemse here.

Access the catalogue of 101 Ways to Long for a Home here.

Watch the film about 101 Ways to Long for a Home here.

Read about the composer Michael Blake's New Music piece called Displaced: 101 ways to long for a home (2018) here and listen to an excerpt here

A short description of 101 Ways to Long for a Home

101 Ways to Long for a Home (2014 - ongoing) is a project by the conceptual artist Emma Willemse, constructing more than a hundred and one handmade artist's books, sculptural objects and containers as part of the installation called 101 Ways to Long for a Home. Intended as an alternative archive for the displacement experience, the number 101 alludes to infinity and imply the never-ending losses of homes endured by people all over the world.

The collection of books and objects is unified by the aesthetics of the exposed underside of discarded parquet floor blocks, which are used extensively throughout, and are mainly sourced from the gentrified suburb called Woodstock in Cape Town, South Africa. Other mediums include a range of archival papers, fabrics, found images and objects, while techniques such as linocut, monotype, collage, drawing and painting are employed. 

The title of the installation suggests an ironic reference to the quick-fix promised by self-help books, as a critique of the notion that trauma linked to the displacement experience can be cured by prescriptive formulae.

101 Ways to Long for a Home has been exhibited in various installation configurations in Florence; Paris; Dakar, Senegal; London; Cape Town; Stellenbosch; Johannesburg; Richmond, Northern Cape, South Africa; Darling, Western Cape, South Africa. and Bloemfontein.

 “…if loss is known only by what remains of it, then the politics and ethics of mourning lie in the interpretation of what remains – how remains are produced and animated, how they are read and sustained.” 

(Eng, DL & Kazanjian,D (eds) 2003:ix)

Eng, D.L. & Kazanjian,D. (eds). 2003. Loss: The politics of mourning.  Berkeley: University of California Press