Shifting Roots: Echoes of Identity and Memory in Migration
Grounded in creative experimentation through participatory photography and film, this thesis explores how migration, memory, and identity shape the spaces we inhabit. Through an autoethnographic approach and engagement with the Albanian immigrant community, it investigates how displacement fractures and reconfigures both personal and collective narratives.
Working with family archives, home videos, and participatory photo collages, the project examines how memory is preserved, fragmented, and reimagined across generations. It highlights the interplay between past and present, absence and presence, and the shifting landscapes of home. Ultimately, this research contributes to broader conversations on cultural continuity, generational trauma, and the emotional landscapes of displacement, uncovering how immigrant communities navigate the tension between longing and adaptation.
HOME VIDEO REMIX
This home video series traces the echoes of migration through family archives and memory. Centered on old footage from Albania, the series unfolds through intimate conversations with my cousins as we watch, reflect, and piece together these captured moments. Shown through the editing software Adobe Premiere Pro, the process itself becomes part of the narrative, revealing not just the memories within the footage but also how we reconstruct and reinterpret them through editing.
Rooted in my thesis research, this project explores the in-between spaces of identity, migration, and generational memory. Through collective reflection and digital reassembly, it questions how we carry the past with us, what is lost or altered in translation, and how home exists not just as a place, but as a shifting resonance within us.
THE COLLECTIVE COLLAGE + SILHOUETTES
In this excerpt, one of my dearest friends shares a story from the night she immigrated from Albania to the US as we put together her collage.
This body of work brings together participatory photo collage and silhouette cutouts to explore memory, identity, and absence across generations of Albanian-American immigrants. Using family photographs, online collaboration tools, and voice recordings, participants were invited to visually map their migration journeys and the emotional landscapes tied to them. Each collage becomes a layered composition of shared stories, personal imagery, and fragmented histories.
Silhouettes are cut from the backgrounds of these photographs—spaces once filled by loved ones, now absent, displaced, or reimagined. Rather than erasing, the silhouettes hold space for what is no longer there, inviting viewers to engage with what’s missing and imagine the stories that continue beyond the frame.
Together, these works activate a visual archive that is not static, but collective, iterative, and alive—filled with echoes, gaps, and shared acts of remembering.
Curious to learn more?
Download a sample of my thesis writing, where I delve deeper into the process behind this work.