SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This research examines how South African artists Nobukho Nqaba and Dan Halter interpret the ubiquitous plaid bag in their artworks to reflect the ineluctable entanglements between migration and identity. Utilising Ferdinand de Saussure’s sign formula, the research exposes the bag’s lack of a universal name due to its complex association with migrant communities. When the bag is further deconstructed using theorist Irit Rogoff’s rematerialisation of the sign formula when examining luggage and suitcases, the bag is shown to have a paradoxical definition of both ‘displacement’ and ‘home’. Isolating and deconstructing the intricacies of the artist’s portrayals of the bag within this context reveals how the bag exists as more than just as a metaphor for arrival or departure. Instead, it resides in a sort of spatial-temporal transmission, thus interpreting the concept of identity as something that exists in constant motion.