This thesis examines belonging as an unresolved and affective condition shaped by migration, race, and everyday spatial experience. Drawing from my position as a diasporic artist from Pakistan living in Canada, the research explores how belonging is performed, negotiated, and deferred within contemporary Canadian contexts.
Grounded in the concept of racial melancholia, as theorized by David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, alongside affect theory and postcolonial frameworks, the thesis investigates the gap between presence and attachment through three interconnected principles: location, sensory experience, and embodiment.
Central to the research is a body of oil paintings that position racialized figures within recognizable Canadian environments, including Tim Hortons interiors, shopping centres, transit systems, and public landmarks. These spaces function as sites where belonging is performed through everyday gestures yet remains affectively unresolved. Through layering, repetition, and incompleteness, the paintings resist visual closure, mirroring the emotional structure of melancholia.
The thesis further situates this practice in dialogue with artists Salman Toor, Mona Hatoum, and Jin-me Yoon, whose works similarly engage themes of diaspora and identity. By focusing on everyday public spaces and subtle affective dissonance, this research positions painting as a method for exploring unresolved experiences of belonging.