Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR

(2020)

Ferenj is a pointcloud dreamscape generated using crowdsourced data and built using gaming technology. In this immersive graphic memoir, “home” is experienced as a post-spatial non-space of history, language, culture, music and time as you drift through reconstructed memories from Empress Taytu Ethiopian Restaurant in Cleveland to the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This afrosurrealist world is an experimental form of emancipatory thought and resistance to othering, reclaiming Ethiopian-American mixed-race identity, redefining boundaries between fragmented nostalgia and the digital imaginary, and contributing to the movement to change the reductive and stereotypical narrative of Africa.