To come from: Migration, Place, and the Deconstructive-phenomenological Constitution of my artistic Practice.
My artistic practice investigates how the world becomes meaningful for a subject shaped by migration. I approach the world not as a stable ground but as a constituted and continually destabilized field of experience, structured through memory, embodiment, historicity, and power. While phenomenology — especially Husserl’s analyses of intentionality, the lifeworld, and constitution — provides one conceptual frame, my work also resonates with Derrida’s deconstruction, which unsettles phenomenology’s reliance on presence, origin, and self‑identity.
To this I add Hannah Arendt’s political ontology of worldliness, which foregrounds appearance, plurality, and the right to have a place in the world. Migration, in my experience, exposes the fragility of this right and reveals the political conditions under which subjects appear, or fail to appear to others.
My practice thus becomes a site where phenomenology, deconstruction, and Arendtian political thought converge: a space where the lived world is constituted, contested, and continually re‑made.
Migration as Intentional Reconfiguration and the Instability of Origin
Husserl’s claim that consciousness is always intentional helps me understand how migration reorganizes perception. Migration introduces a shift in intentional directedness: the world must be oriented, interpreted, and negotiated anew.
Yet Derrida complicates this by showing that intentionality is never pure; it is always mediated by iterability, the repeatability of signs that precedes the subject. When I am asked “Where are you from”, the question presupposes a stable origin, a point of presence. Migration reveals that origin is always already fractured, deferred, and incomplete. Identity becomes a site of différance, where meaning is produced through deferral rather than presence.
Arendt adds a political dimension: the question of origin is also a question of worldly belonging. It tests whether I am recognized as someone who has a legitimate place in the shared world. Migration thus becomes both a phenomenological reorientation and a political exposure.
The Lifeworld as Displaced Horizon, Structured by Trace and Appearance
Phenomenology describes the lifeworld as the pre‑reflective ground of experience. Migration destabilizes this ground, producing dislocation, temporal layering, and epistemic friction. But Derrida shows that the lifeworld was never fully grounded; it is structured by traces, remnants of other times, places, and meanings.
In my work, the lifeworld appears as a palimpsest of traces: memories that return without fully appearing, histories that shape perception without being present, languages that echo even when unspoken.
Arendt’s concept of appearance adds another layer. For her, the world is the space where we appear to one another, where our actions and stories become real. Migration disrupts this space of appearance. The displaced lifeworld is not only phenomenologically unstable; it is politically precarious. My work seeks to reconstruct spaces of appearance where displaced experiences can become visible.
Constitution, Supplementarity, and the Non‑Self‑Identity of Identity and Place
Husserlian constitution describes how meaning arises in consciousness. In my practice, identity is not an essence but a constituted and supplemented structure, shaped by memory, migration, language, place, and the gaze of others. Derrida’s notion of the supplement reveals that identity is never complete; it is always supplemented by what it excludes.
Arendt’s thought clarifies the political stakes of this incompleteness. Identity is not only constituted through experience; it is co‑constituted through plurality — through the presence of others who see, hear, and respond. Identity emerges in the “in‑between” space that Arendt calls the world.
Place, too, is constituted relationally. It is not a fixed coordinate but an experiential and political configuration, produced through bodily orientation, social relations, and the right to appear. My work examines how place becomes meaningful — and how it becomes contested — under conditions of displacement.
Epoché, Deconstruction, and the Suspension of Presence and Worldliness
Husserl’s epoché suspends assumptions to reveal how the world appears. My artistic methods — isolating fragments, foregrounding marginalized narratives, constructing alternative archives — enact a similar suspension. But deconstruction pushes this further: it suspends not only assumptions but the very possibility of stable presence.
When I isolate a fragment, I reveal its iterability — its capacity to generate new meanings in new contexts. When I foreground a marginalized story, I expose the exclusions that made dominant narratives possible. When I construct an alternative archive, I reveal the archive’s inherent instability.
Arendt’s concept of worldliness adds a political dimension to this suspension. To suspend dominant narratives is also to reconfigure the shared world, to create new spaces where different stories can appear. My work becomes a deconstructive epoché that opens the world to plurality.
The Body as Phenomenological and Political Node
Phenomenology insists that experience is embodied. Migration is therefore bodily: being looked at, explaining myself, navigating unfamiliar spaces, carrying memories in muscle and gesture. Derrida shows that the body is also a text, inscribed by social forces, histories, and discourses.
Arendt adds that the body is the condition of appearance; it is through the body that I enter the shared world. But for migrants, this appearance is often contested. The body becomes a site where phenomenological experience, deconstructive inscription, and political recognition intersect.
My work explores this intersection: how the body perceives, remembers, and appears and how it is read, misread, or refused by others.
Conclusion: Toward a Deconstructive Phenomenology of Migration and Worldliness
Through a combined phenomenological, deconstructive, and Arendtian lens, my artistic practice emerges as an inquiry into how the world is constituted, destabilized, and politically negotiated for a subject in migration. Identity, place, and history appear as experiential structures, shaped by intentionality and embodiment, but also as unstable constructs, marked by différance, trace, and supplementarity.
Arendt reminds me that these structures are not only experiential but worldly; they determine how I appear to others and whether I am recognized as belonging to the shared world.
Migration reveals that the world is never fully present, never fully grounded. It exposes the fractures, deferrals, and exclusions that structure experience and political life. My work uses art as both phenomenological method and deconstructive strategy: a way to suspend dominant narratives, reveal their limits, and create new spaces of appearance.
To “come from here” is not a statement of origin but an ongoing negotiation; a process of world‑making shaped by presence and absence, experience and trace, recognition and refusal.
Short Bio:
Paula Urbano (b. 1980) is based in Stockholm and holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts & Design, a postgraduate degree in Architecture from the Royal Institute of Art and she was a grant holder of Research and Development Grant from the Royal Institute of Art 2015. Urbano has exhibited her work in museums and galleries in Sweden, New York, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Miami, and Santiago de Chile. Her work is represented at The Public Art Agency Sweden, Sundsvalls Museum, Museum Anna Nordlander, Filmform, Botkyrka Kommun, Haninge Kommun, Folkets Hus och Parker and Bygdegårdarnas Riksförbund.
Email: paula(at)paulaurbano.com
As it could be
Lately:
During fall 2025 I worked as a lecturer in aesthetic learning processes at Södertörn University.
I was at an artist in residence in New York summer 2025.
I wrote an autoethonographic art critical text entitled The resistance we inherited for the anarchistic magazine called Brand theme Life and Death.
My artistic research project entitled To come from the Future was published in the largest journal for artistic research VIS journal 12 Theme Contemporary Ar(t)chaeology: A dead-alive of Artistic Re-search and History, published 23 October 2024.
Pubic commission in Gottsunda, Uppsala. A sculpture that is a contemporary rune stone made of three different types of Swedish stone with a text engraved on a mirror of stainless steel entitled Härkomma. English title Rememberance Spanish Title P(r)orvenir. Commissioner: Public art Uppsala Municipality. Art consultants: Art Platform.
During the period 1.1.2024-31.05.2024 I participated as co-investigator in the artistic research project called transitory writing in no one’s land conducted by researchers Lena Séraphin, Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi Borja and Cordula Daus, supported by the Kone foundation.
Groupshow by Museum of Forgetting NUTOPIA -NY STAD @studio44 and Tegen2 in Stockholm 23 feb-17 mars 2024
Soloshow at Sundsvall Museum 9 sept-26 nov 2023