Migration V returns the focus to the individual, offering a quieter, contemplative moment within the broader narrative of movement and belonging. Here, the familiar checkered blanket—already established throughout the series as a deeply personal emblem of home—is reimagined as a traditional headwrap. In this form, it becomes a crown of culture and identity, worn with quiet pride.

The subject gazes off-frame, her expression composed yet alert, as if absorbing the new while holding fast to the old. The use of colour is deliberate: her face rendered in warm, saturated tones against a background of split hues—deep burgundy and soft yellow—signifying once again the tension between origin and destination, between what is carried and what is encountered.

The composition rests in stillness, but the material atop her head moves with energy. Thick brushstrokes and vibrant colour passages animate the cloth, while drips of paint cascade down like threads unraveling or memories seeping through. The contrast between the tightly observed portrait and the expressive abstraction of the blanket reinforces the duality of migration: the internal clarity of identity versus the external turbulence of change.

This piece honours cultural continuity—not as nostalgia, but as living, wearable memory. The headdress becomes both shelter and statement. Worn with dignity, it declares that home is not only a place we leave or seek, but something we carry within us—stitched into ritual, rhythm, and the fabric of our traditions.

Migration V

50 x 60 cm

Oil on canvas

2025