MALÚ AVAREZ

Born in Mexico City
Grew up in San Antonio, Texas
Resides in New York City

When I went to college and came back for the first break, I had an overwhelming sense of homesickness. We had to speak English because a guest was there. Later, when I went to Australia to study, I was completely by myself. Even though I had some contacts, and I was working the last year and a half, in that time, the weekends could be very lonely.

My photographs capture different images of home from details of interiors to food. I often feel like I’m between places culturally, but also now, I’m in this in-between place where I still very much yearn for the comfort and life of my family’s home as I try to make my own.

JEFF BECK

Born in Huntington Beach, California
Resides in Huntington Beach, California

Home looks like a rat maze to me. Everybody’s in a grid here, but it’s what I know. I’m sick of it, I leave, and then I miss it. I paint these neighborhoods that I’ve known my whole life. It’s their familiarity that relates to the theme of homesickness.

This will be a continuation of a series I’ve worked on for the last few years of the suburbs— the local Southern California suburban housing track. The response that I’ve gotten from most people that have seen [the work] is familiarity. Everyone thinks—if they’ve grown up in Southern California—that it’s a painting of the neighborhood they grew up in. People tell me: I know where that is. Most of the time, it’s not. It’s kind of funny; it’s so homogenous here that everyone has the same feeling for it.

LIVIA CORONA

Born in Ensenada, Baja California
Resides in New York and Mexico City

One can define home not by the mere construction of a dwelling, but as the combination of cultural, ecological, academic, architectural and social environments that delineate areas of growth for living creatures.

“Two Million Homes for Mexico" documents the massive low-income housing projects currently spreading through remote agrarian territory in Mexico. It explores multiple definitions of home, from the perspectives of real estate developers to the young resident families. The project examines the surge and effects of these developments, focusing on their role in the ongoing transformation of the cultural and ecological landscape in Mexico.

JENNIFER DESSINGER

Born in Torrance, California
Resides in New York City

A lot of the time [Homesick] is sensory. It can be a smell that takes me back to something—it’s almost a dizzying feeling. It always gets me going back to California, when I get into a hot car that’s been sitting in the sun, I think: oh my god, I’ve totally forgotten about this.

Over the past seven years I’ve been shooting the Demolition Derby project which is a direct reference to my dad, the relationship that I had with him, and missing it. There’s something really beautiful about [the Demolition Derby]. In the time that I’ve been going to these since I was five, it’s never changed. It’s exactly the same.

EDWARD DOTY

Born in Fairfield, Connecticut
Grew Up in Needham, Massachusetts
Resides in Brooklyn, New York

I have this memory of driving, when we were moving to Massachusetts from Connecticut, of driving on the highway from one house to another. That kind of displacement, having left one place and not having arrived in the new home, an early sense of that is what I consider homesick.

These photographs are from some slides that I found, mostly that were taken by my paternal grandfather. A few years ago, I started looking at them again, re-photographing them with magnifying glasses and cropping the images to something that was of particular interest to me. I recomposed some of the pictures and used the kind of blurring effect that the magnifiers provided to get a sense of what it was like for me to look at those. I’m thinking about how the photographic object functions kind of as a place-keeper, and also as a way of generating memories, stories and kind of a history because I can’t identify many of the people in those photographs. There’s still a lot of mystery about them. [A photograph] is a small object that can move around with you, that still refers back to the idea of home if not necessarily the specific place that was considered home.

AMY ELKINS

Born in Venice Beach, California
Resides in Brooklyn, New York

Homesickness to me is a strong aching or longing to be amidst things more familiar, calm and embracing. At times this can include strong feelings of nostalgia and a longing to step back in time to childhood, or it can simply be the wish for the comforts of my own bed.

“Black is the Day, Black is the Night” is a work in progress, surrounding the correspondence between myself and several men serving Life and Death Row sentences throughout the United States. I imagine anybody isolated from the entire world to the degree of being in solitary confinement for over a decade has a cloudy sense of the word “home” and has perhaps let go of nostalgic thoughts for fear it might only cause pain. Perhaps it is homesickness, not for a particular place, but for anything or anywhere other than one’s own reality.

FEDERICO GUTIÉRREZ SCHOTT

Born in Torreón, México
Resides in Torreón, México

Right after high school, I left to Germany for a year. I know there are different levels of homesickness. I experienced a version that was like an illness. In my case, I felt it was more an intense feeling of being detached from my environment and being plugged into this new environment. It made me nauseous.

STEPHANIE HALMOS

Born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Resides in Brooklyn, New York

Homesick… I see it more as a longing for childhood, for memories. It is a longing for that freedom of having someone else care for you, and the ability to be lost without any sense of responsibility.

[My work] is representative of shifts in ideals, much of which I think happens when you leave home. Home to me is such a fluid word. In these pieces there is a literal depiction of people or objects in water, fog and these wet environments. When you leave from where you’ve been raised, the ideals with which you grew up begin to change as your definition of home changes. It is a process of growing.

DENNIS McLEOD

Born in Norfolk, Virginia
Resides in the San Francisco Bay Area

Before moving to California, I had only been where I was born and raised. My family didn’t really travel so moving [to California] was like being a duck out of water. I was born in the south and it’s just a completely different experience. Home for me was having a close knit group of friends and being able to play every day: explore with them, go out all day and the parents wouldn’t worry—so a certain amount of freedom just to be on my own with my buddies.

The work that I’m going to be showing is based some on astronomy and constellations, and some of it is inspired by a trip I took to India about a year ago. I didn’t want to create works specifically for the show that some how tied into the notion of homesick … I know the way that I work stems from some early childhood discoveries that for years I didn’t even remember in terms of [my] process. The manner in which I work has been greatly influenced by those early childhood experiences and has offered me an opportunity to build and expand upon a body of work that fascinates me

DERICK MELANDER

Born in Saratoga Springs, New York
Resides in New York City

Since moving here, I’ve never really left New York for probably more than a month. I did go to Washington DC for six months at one point. I never thought about being homesick at the time. I thought I was just suffering from a broken heart. But that probably was also being homesick for New York.

I’m excited to work with clothing that comes all from one source. Essentially, this pretty specific population that has [one person] in the middle is very interesting to me. If you can fancy that clothing perhaps maintains a trace of the people who wore it, as the elbows wear out on an old sweater and the way that jeans get tattered along the cuff, in a sense, the piece is going to end up ultimately being like a portrait.

BRIAN PAUMIER

Born in Oxnard, California
Resides in New York City

I'm homesick for my memories. I hang out with my grandmother and she can’t do the things that she used to do: I want to play cards with her until three in the morning, I want to go to the bakery and buy bread with her, but she can’t do that any more. I’m sad when things aren’t what they used to be. When things are changing and not remembered enough, I feel more homesick for the past.

The images that I’m presenting are the memories of my home in both California and Ohio, and of my grandmother. I’m showing things that may not be around anymore and things that might disappear.

KELLY REEMTSEN

Born in Flint, Michigan
Resides in Los Angeles, California

The first time I went to camp, it was a two-week camp. Every day felt like an eternity. I also felt like I was really far away from home. I was probably only a couple of hours away, but it felt on the other side of the world. I think in general, homesick means people who are longing for home. Instead of nostalgia, I’m viewing homesick at a different angle and using the word as a mental illness.

The work is about my obsessive-compulsive behavior. It’s always kind of joke between me and my friends about how clean I am. I am searching for perfection: fixing, organizing and cleaning my home because it never seems quite right.

JOAQUIN TRUJILLO

Born in Los Angeles, California
Grew up in Zacatecas, México
Resides in New York City

Homesick was a word that was foreign to me. We really don’t have that word in Mexico. Someone explained it to me, but it still was a mystery until I got to New York. It was interesting to me that when I was so happy, had accomplished what I had worked for, when I had reached this moment, I felt so alone even though I was surrounded by so many people. I started wondering what homesick was for a lot of other people that I knew.

Flowers are really important in my mother and sisters' homes, not just on birthdays and anniversaries, but everyday and year round, on their patios and through their houses. When I was a kid I used to pick flowers from each of them. But December 12, Guadalupe Day, was extra special. I would make a bouquet that was so amazing, I always felt like I had taken home the first place blue ribbon at an American county fair for it. Six flowers and one arrangement is the representation of love and support they have given me. My arrangement represents what I have consciously obtained from them as well as what has made me the man I am today.

SOPHIA WALLACE

Born in Seattle, Washington
Resides in Queens, New York

Homesick for me is a lot about memories of the past, my family, and the people I grew up with who influenced and shaped me.

I’m going to be showing found photographs of my grandmother—portraits of her and then also portraits of me as her. In creating this series, the process of discovery and restoration was important to me. I know very little about the period of her life before her role as wife, mother and grandmother—when she was Sophie Olafson, a theater student and the teacher of a one-room schoolhouse. I lost my grandmother this year so the series is about losing and finding my grandmother.