The house of letters is an indoor installation that deals with the concept of immigration and displacement. Mc Connon has created a classic house structure (measuring 2.8×2.5×2.5metres) using almost two thousand letters that she has collected from immigrants in countries all around the world. The letters are all handwritten on paper and represent the communication between families, friends and loved ones that live apart from each other. They are personal testimonies to the reality of a life away from your homeland. The letters expose the emotional traces of the journey of the immigrant for whom the concept of home is distorted and is compromised. The artist has collected the letters, these personal testimonies from this diaspora of people and she has housed them together in the House of Letters.
The installation allows us to contemplate the life of the immigrant. In recent times immigration has had such devastating consequences for many, in an attempt to counteract this, Miriam aims to express a sense of unification as opposed to separation as she brings thousands of immigrants stories together under one roof.
In this installation Miriam exposes the rarity of the act of letter writing. Because of advances in technology the act of writing and posting a letter is fast disappearing giving the object of the letter a rare value, a value that is given to something of the past. With this value comes nostalgia and fragility. The installation, the house of letters is built entirely of paper handwritten letters echoing this sense of fragility. This installation allows us to appreciate the beauty and rarity of the handwritten letter as both an object and as a silent speech from people displaced around the world.
