Bittany Fanning

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

I've spent much of my adult life moving. At fifteen, my family left Jacksonville, Florida, for the small mountain town of Dahlonega, Georgia. The locals called themselves "Nuggets," a reference to the Georgia Gold Rush. It was a way of separating those who belonged from everyone else. I was told you needed to live there for ten years to become a "Nugget." After college I moved to South Korea, where I lived for seven years. Longtime expats often measured one another by how many years they'd been there. Then I moved to Los Angeles, where there was a divide between people born in the city and those who came for work or the endless sunshine. Even after years there, people would tell me I couldn't really understand LA unless I'd lived there for several years. This past winter I moved to New York City, where conversations about gentrification and who counts as a "real" New Yorker are impossible to avoid. Every city seems to have its own way of separating insiders from outsiders. After Korea, I imagined Georgia as the place I would eventually return to. It had become my idea of home, despite the fact that I never became a "Nugget." When I finally returned, years later, searching for a home, I found the town completely altered by commercial development and political polarization. The Hallmark town I remembered no longer existed. I've been obsessively searching for the feeling of home ever since returning from Korea. In Los Angeles, I spent weekends wandering through open houses,...

Artwork