Jahipidamine Kuulumine (Hunting Belonging)

My work emerges from the dual inheritance of Australian and Estonian identity, tracing the subtle threads that bind memory, geography, and familial narrative. The stories passed down from my grandmother formed an early imaginative landscape - fragmented, intimate accounts shaped by the upheavals of WWII. Through dislocation, my grandmother lost not only her husband (my grandfather) but also the everyday fluency of her mother tongue, and these quiet absences became part of the atmosphere surrounding my upbringing. In the years since my grandmother’s passing, I have travelled to Estonia multiple times, allowing these encounters to inform a sustained inquiry into how personal and cultural histories settle within the body. Jahipidamine Kuulumine (Hunting Belonging) extends this exploration, with the most recent iteration, Läänemeriare (Baltic Sea), contemplating the emotional and ancestral resonance of the region and the loved ones who remain there. The work becomes a site where inherited memory and lived experience intersect, overlap, and shift.