The Trace of Everyday Life: The Interpretation of Déjà vu in Fine Art Practice

This practice-based research project investigates the use of déjà vu as an artistic strategy of ‘affect’, in relation to the spatial and temporal displacement associated with déjà vu and the unheimlich (i.e. uncanny/ unhomely). My practice, and its theoretical contextualisation, address ideas that are manifest in the philosophical and psychological literature on the connection between déjà vu and the unheimlich, particularly in relationship to Vernon M. Neppe’s definition of déjà vu and the Freudian uncanny concept. My specific focus is on displacement associated with being away from home. Although various artists have likewise engaged experiences of déjà vu, the unheimlich, their works tend to address emotions connected to fear, which relate to the idea of death or what we have lost. However, Alan S. Brown’s research of déjà vu emphasises the memory aspect of such experiences, while the explanations of Anne M. Cleary and Nikhil Shamapant investigate how déjà vu can be aroused by matching the current visual stimulus with a similar one in memory. Nicholas Royle argues that the uncanny is a mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity, which has opened new insights that will be followed in this thesis.

My use of déjà vu and the unheimlich aims to shed light into the process of exploring the continuity of home, such that déjà vu and the unheimlich can be perceived as a peculiar combination of feeling familiar and yet unfamiliar. Within the previous situation of lockdown due to COVID-19 on a global scale, the unheimlich becomes more ubiquitous through forced confinement. My research evolved during two periods of quarantine that I experienced respectively in March and September 2020. The first experience was when I was required to quarantine at my (familiar) parents’ home after arriving back in China; the second was the time after I returned to London from China and had to quarantine again in my new (unfamiliar) dwelling place. Such experiences helped me to focus more acutely on what déjà vu and the unheimlich might be in these different dwelling environments. In particular, I address my understanding from two directions in my practice: on the one hand, I use the silhouette image of everyday objects, and transparent figures in my drawing, as the metaphors for a state of ‘ghosting’ to discuss the unheimlich through the issue of absence and presence; on the other hand, I depict the changes of my perception about the composition during the process of settling down in a new dwelling space to explore the unheimlich and déjà vu (i.e. the setting of furniture and everyday objects to show a psychological change from feeling strange to familiar, or a sense of being at home). And later, the experience of moving to a new dwelling space almost in the same area in London in 2021 was also included in this study to continue my exploration. These experiences will be explored through material processes of making and contrasting my work to other practitioners such as Rachel Whiteread and Do Ho Suh. Through the process of making and exhibiting these artworks, and through the investigation of a sense of continuity of home, the meaning of special objects, and the issue of absence, presence and displacement, the research provides a new way of insights into the constructive role of déjà vu and the unheimlich within fine art perspective.