Unmapped: Traces of Home by Natasha Moustache

Curated by Vasia Rigou, on display February 6th through March 31st.

Note from the Curator

“I’m thinking about cultural inheritance, colonial influence, shared generational traumas, and creolization,” says Natasha Moustache, whose work examines the intricate layers of identity, collective histories, and familial connections shaped—and continually reshaped—by the legacies of colonized spaces. Through photography and installation, the first-generation Seychellois-American Chicago-based artist traces the ties of the African diaspora across oceans and borders, bridging cultural divides and uncovering stories of resilience and displacement.

Reimagined domestic settings—from Chicago’s South Side to the Seychelles, a scattered archipelago often romanticized as “the Original Garden of Eden”—takes center stage. Bold patterns, intricate motifs, and custom furnishings become vessels for cultural memory and collective inheritance. In the process, strangers become collaborators: their homes welcome you in, their stories interwoven into a broader exploration of belonging.

Between their grandparents’ homeland and the place they now call home, the artist creates connections between two seemingly disparate geographies united by a shared history of erasure and resilience—lands shaped by displacement yet brimming with culture and memory. Through Moustache’s lens, they become profound sites of storytelling, illuminating the unseen and unspoken while exploring the layered meanings of belonging in worlds still charting their histories.

Immersive and evocative at once, Unmapped draws you in, offering a poignant backdrop where the personal and the collective converge. It invites viewers to reflect on the intersections of culture, memory, and the personal experience. Both a meditation on the past and an invitation to reimagine the future, it redefines home as a fluid, evolving concept. At its core, Moustache’s work goes beyond honoring the untold stories of the African diaspora and the resilience woven within them—it stands as a powerful testament to enduring histories and voices that demand to be heard.

—Vasia Rigou, curator

About the Artist

Natasha Moustache is a photo-based installation artist whose work explores identity, shared histories, and familial ties within colonized spaces. Moustache’s work reflects their experience as a first-generation, Seychellois-American, examining African Diasporic ties across oceans and manmade borders. They regularly engage strangers as collaborator-participants, utilizing portraiture, and the reimagining of domestic spaces through installation. Moustache is interested in bringing the human community into a conversation with itself that transcends difference and emphasizes commonality.

Moustache completed their MFA (2021) at Columbia College Chicago and their BFA (2004) at Simmons College in Boston, Ma. Their work has most recently been shown at the Vermont Center for Photography, the Lubeznik Center, the Hyde Park Arts Center, the Houston Center for Photography, and the International Center for Photography. They have had residencies at Hyde Park Art Center, Center for Photography at Woodstock and Latitude Chicago. Moustache’s editorial work has been published internationally in academic literature and periodicals. They were a 2024 Newcity Breakout Artist, a 2021 MOCP Snider Prize Honorable mention and a 2020 Hopper Prize finalist.
Location

Milk Room Display Cases on the 2nd Floor

Official Website

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