Cliff Andrade, Dana Olarescu, and Natalia Kalicki in Natalia Kalicki’s installation, *A Room For Living.*

Following a competetive selection process by ArtHouse Jersey, three artists were chosen to participate in ‘Home,’ a socially engaged six week residency and exhibition project on Jersey Island. Natalia Kalicki (Poland) Cliff Andrade (Portugal) and Dana Olarescu (Romania) worked with minority communities to research the contributions and lives of immigrants living on the island. Their research further informed the work of Gabriel Pitcher, who was commissioned to paint a public mural within the same theme.

Natalia’s installation, A Room For Living, is a simulated living room. It reflects on the complicated issue of feeling at home in public space, with regards the ‘qualified’ and ‘unqualified’ immigration policy in Jersey. To this day, newcomers to Jersey are only permitted to work in the lowest earning tier of jobs for the first five years of residency, and cannot start businesses or own property until they ‘become ten years old.’ They are the backbone of the economy, working in agriculture and hospitality sectors, yet are marginalized for it. High living costs and having access to only ‘unqualified’ housing means that immigrants spend most of their time between their dwellings and work, they are discouraged from having children, and do not have very much time engaging in public life.

Since the time required for participating in public life becomes in itself a luxury, questions of home and belonging are tied to cultural issues as much as they are to island economics, which are manifest in a policy that prioritizes profit over inclusion and humane infrastructures.

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Within the installation, Jersey Cooks, a book containing stories, recipes, and drawings from six weeks of field work was displayed. Firstly, the book was the direct result of engaging with Polish identifying members of the community. Disguised as a cook book, the collection began with the question of what we can understand of Jersey Island’s social and economic structures when looking at the lives of Polish individuals through the prism of food practices. It expanded to include a plurality of narratives within the community, and became a foray into memory that looks at the forms and boundaries of belonging. The book was contained in an ‘honesty box’ typical of the island, where visitors were encouraged to leave cash or a comment and take a copy home.