Who IS the foreigner? Am I the foreigner in my own home? Who decides? Such were the questions posed by renowned author Toni Morrison at her 2006 guest-curated exhibit at the Louvre, “The Foreigner’s Home”. There she invited several renowned artists whose work also dealt with the experience of cultural and social displacement to join her in a public discussion that Morrison herself had been pursuing through her own research and writing.
This film expands that discussion by integrating exclusive footage of the Nobel Laureate in dialogue with artists in 2006 with a sit-down conversation in her own home with fellow writer Edwidge Danticat in 2015. The film also draws on extensive archival film footage, musical performances, and animation to frame a series of candid exchanges about race, identity, and art’s redemptive power. In this way, The Foreigner’s Home explores the idea of “foreignness” and highlights art’s crucial role in both understanding and addressing the increasingly urgent problems that surround it.
