Art Exhibition Featuring Heike Liss: "Home is When I Belong"

"Home is When I Belong" is an exhibition that brings together photographs from two series of works by Heike Liss, a German born artist who spends her time living, working, and traveling in California and Europe with her husband and children. The first series, "home/away" (since 2002), contains photographs taken in hotel rooms during the artist's travels. Liss says: “I think of these images as portraits that speak of a sense of a lack of belonging: in a place, in a time, in the world.” The second series of photographs in Home is When I Belong is the artist's more formal "Family Portraits" (since 2003). Here Liss photographs people in their homes in and around Oakland, eloquently capturing the diverse range of family structures existent today. Across both series, Liss investigates how we define ourselves in relation to the fundamentally human concepts of “home” and “family.” Her photographs reveal some of the universal aspects of life experience and identity within varied socio-cultural situations.