Faculty of Art

Sculpture/Installation

Harmony McNish

Nomadic Homestead

A trailered structural sculpture proposed to be a future artist residency. Built conceptually to vessel the essence of home as spaces of belonging become temporary home(s). Nomadic Homestead a dedication to reconciliation that legacy homesteaded properties are ephemeral connections to land, as I realize the problematics of a permanent existence on unceded Indigenous Land.

“Nomadic Homestead as a concept is a contradictory statement that is a metaphor to how I am feeling towards my senses of home. In the midst of a current Canadian housing crisis, I challenge the concept and essence of a space of potential or temporary home(s). Personally caught in the crosshairs of being influenced by the travelling tiny house era and my homebody experiences of growing up on an intergenerational homestead. I work whimsically to emerge and suggest aspects of home(s) to sculpturally create Nomadic Homestead.The trailered structure looks at replicating elements of home, as I have salvaged various parts from the homestead and different people to make me feel at home. I have discreetly integrated a washing machine door as the bulged round window to symbolize my grandmother. I used aluminum hydro pole arms as roof trusts within the structure to remind me of my partner who works in the powerline trade. I anticipated that the materials encapsulated in the Nomadic Homestead vessel would ongoingly depict my story of belonging to spaces and senses of home.Critically thinking through the ideas of belonging to home, I land at the conclusion that I am still learning the cultural, political, and my own familial complexities attached to bureaucracies of land severances and property ownership. I acknowledge the damage homesteads have done to Indigenous people, specifically the Wendake-Nionwentsïo, Mississauga, Hodenosauneega, and Anishinabewaki peoples who were the original caregivers of the land that I reference as my home; my place of settled belonging.As I try to unsettle the roots of my Scottish ancestors, represented by the carved Scottish Thistle, I look to ephemeralness, temporary existences and nomad displacements of potential sites of homes. Ephemeral existences offered with the shelter's ability to be uprooted and transported by trailer to many places of temporary homes.Contrastingly, working alongside my dad to construct outbuildings on the legacy homestead in Kawartha Lakes has taught me how to craft architecture. My father learned how to build sheds from his dad; my grandfather Jim-Jim. Since my grandfather passed, building with my dad has become learning the language of the rural craftsmen trade and recognizing it as intergenerational learning; knowledge that is passed on.With the motive to share this intergenerational knowledge and the community that makes the story's foundation, I propose to share the landscape by hosting a temporary artist residency within the shelter of Nomadic Homestead. An opportunity to share the land, knowledge, and space I have created and referenced throughout my ongoing homestead body of work.”