Dépaysement, a French word whose literal meaning is ‘to be without a country,’ describes the sense of disorientation in unfamiliar places. For adventure travellers, it describes that combination of nervousness and exhilaration of being in countries whose customs and language are strange and new. Artists are familiar with the feeling, as each artwork is a step into the unknown. The Surrealists, and later conceptual artists, deliberately created dépaysement or disorientation to present familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts.

Since nomadic humans established agricultural societies and city life, a world of predictability and sameness emerged. While comforting for most, there have always been those who are restless, who crave challenges and a life of adventure. Some travellers, such as Marco Polo and Ibn-i-Batutta and the many explorers of history, thirsted for knowledge of distant lands. Others, such as the illegal migrants making hazardous journeys, and the many young people who run away to the city, wish to escape unbearable living conditions.

The British Somali writer Warsan Shire believes, “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,” while J.R. Tolkein writes, “Not all those who wander are lost.” The Silk Route and colonialism were established for trade and acquisition of wealth, but were equally an opportunity for wanderlust.

In 17th- and 18th-century England, the Grand Tour of Europe was an essential experience for gentlemen, and some women, to complete their education and develop their aesthetic. A more connected world encouraged permanent migrations.

The term ‘migration’ emerged in the 1700s; however, people have been migrating since the establishment of human society. Large-scale migrations were undertaken to escape the Ice Age, wars or religious and political persecution. Emigrants are those who leave a country, immigrants those who wish to enter a country, settlers occupy a country, establishing their own rules and nomads have no fixed abode.

Today the West is alarmed with migration, yet, since 1500, the largest mass migrations have been by Europeans who populated the Americas, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, reducing local populations to less than three percent. In much of Africa and the colonised nations, they dominated not by numbers but by wresting power, so one can understand their concern.

A consequence of migration has been the evolution of culture, knowledge, skill and economic development. The best example would be the Greeks who migrated to Southern Europe between eighth and fifth century BC, evolving and spreading Greek culture not just in Europe but further afield, in the wake of Alexander’s conquests. The transnational Muslim empires (eighth to 11th century AD), the age of discovery and colonial empires (15th - 19th century AD) created opportunities for the exchange of cultures and the transmission of knowledge. Tragic events such as the displacement of people during the French Revolution, Nazi rule, occupation of Palestine, the partition of India and the many world conflicts, equally played a part in the dissemination of cultures. Religious mystics, such as Sufis, travelled to all corners of the world, settling in lands far from their countries of birth.

Voluntary migration is not random. Migrants seek the culture they feel closer to the their home culture they may feel disconnected with. Many of the Romantic poets such as Bryon, Shelley and Keats migrated to Italy, for its history, aesthetics and more liberal society. Some artists such as Paul Gauguin, who migrated to Tahiti, were searching for inspiration. Others such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte or Modigliani gravitated towards the major art centres of Paris and New York.

For most ordinary people, migration grows out of a state of mind, described by the much travelled poet Robert W. Service: “There’s a race of men that don’t fit in/ A race that can’t sit still/So they break the hearts of kith and kin/And they roam the world at will.”

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist and heads the department of visual studies at the University of Karachi Email: durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 23rd, 2020