What defines home? Is it our personal connection to a place, or the forces that dictate where and how we belong? This exhibit brings together the work of Samira Hemmat and Alison Ouellette-Kirby, two artists who interrogate the concept of home from profoundly different but interconnected perspectives, examining the tension between the deeply personal and the structural realities of home.

Samira Hemmat explores home as an intimate, internal space, one shaped by memory, longing, and the emotional weight of displacement. Using abstraction and material shifts, her work captures the psychological and visceral experience of searching for belonging after being uprooted. Alison Ouellette-Kirby investigates home through a critical lens, using the Monopoly house as a metaphor for the commercialization of belonging. Her work questions whether home is a place of comfort, a symbol of stability, or a product of economic systems. With the Monopoly house as a recurring motif, her work questions whether home is a sanctuary or a product to be bought and sold, how homeownership is often less about shelter and more about power, privilege, and economic control. Together, the exhibition challenges the audience to reflect on their own relationship with home. Is home something we feel or something we own? Is it a space of belonging, or is it dictated by external forces beyond our control?

By placing these perspectives in conversation, this exhibit asks viewers to consider the forces—both personal and structural—that define home. Is home something we create and carry within us, or is it defined by borders, banks, and bureaucracies? How do systems of power decide who has access to stability, and who remains displaced? Through different mediums and perspectives, the exhibition invites viewers to navigate the emotional and structural complexities of home—both lost and found, exposing the complexities of what it truly means to belong.