Split in Two: Home. Belonging. Being Pulled.
Artist, Writer, and performer Krystal Lowe explores the relationship between Wales and Bermuda, her two homes, and how it has influenced her work.
The home I have is a tiny terraced house cwtched between its peers. It warms us in the winter and it smoulders in the summer. There are licks of golden-yellow paint on the white ceiling from painting the walls in lockdown; the second step wobbles and there’s this one warm spot on the floor in the small bedroom that I curl up in when I’m on my own. Within its walls, I feel like my true self; I’m home. And when I lay on the cigarette scented peppermint green sofa that I bought at a charity shop in 2011 for £50 and look up at the painting I bought in a market in China, and the little wooden bear I bought in Bromyard, and hold Young Lowe tightly in my arms; my heart still rumbles with the constant longing for home.
Belonging. Cynfin. My heart breaks at the idea of belonging here - finding home here. Even though my passport and Welsh son are very clear connections to this place - it’s something different to belong here. Maybe it’s because we’re so often asked to choose only one place to call home; only one place to belong.
There’s a Welsh folktale called Merched y Môr (Daughters of the Sea in English) about two men, a father with three daughters and a sea god called Dylan. But really, it’s about women who are split in two - belonging to the land and the sea at the will of the men in the story.
Dylan is jealous of the father having daughters, so creates a storm to steal the daughters from him. It’s not until Dylan sees the sadness of the father that he decides to turn the women into seagulls to belong to both the land and the sea - to belong to both the father and the god. An incredible story of belonging and who gets to decide where, and with whom, we belong.
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