NLResearch project: Art and dialogue between two generations
What role can art have when we look at intergenerational transmission of culture in multicultural families?
Building Conversation supports Lital Ephraim (master student of Art Education, Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Tilburg) with her research on this question. Lital investigates how she can open the conversation between two generations, and break patterns, by making art. She has experienced herself how recognizable moments from a theater performance she saw with her father, later opened the conversation between them. It made her father see how important it is to tell the stories about family history, cultural values, and the challenges of having multiple cultural identities. This understanding created space for a dialogue in which they both accepted the differences in language and culture as they were and did not experience them as a barrier.
Together with Building Conversation, Lital investigates how the making of art can be equivalent to the dialogue.
During the research, she performs interventions with both her father and two other families whose first generation has a migration background. The study consists of three parts:
– themed dinners at the families’ homes where a different topic is brought into the dialogue with each course
– artistic interventions in which cooking and dining together is replaced by making art together
– a group discussion where the families come together and where there is room for the different perspectives and moments of recognition