Don’t Forget to Call Home

In 2019, artist Yasmine Nasser Diaz drove all over Burbank to find a fridge for a replica of the kitchen in her childhood home.

She had designed the yellow wallpaper from memory and made sure each object was authentic: a mortar and pestle, container of clarified butter, and big jar of Yemeni honey (“the best in the world!”). “I know myself, said Diaz. “I would feel so unsatisfied if it didn’t feel quite right.”

The most important object was the cassette player on the kitchen table. Diaz, who was born in Chicago to Yemeni parents, said she and her six siblings would be summoned to the kitchen to listen to cassette tapes sent from relatives overseas.

This memory became the basis for her installation the sound of your voice is home (2022), which invited people to enter the space and listen to recordings of memories and voice mails sent between family members living across the diaspora.

“Now that we have WhatsApp and internet and email, we don’t necessarily think, ‘I got to save this, this is special,’” she said. But as she edited together a 13-minute audio track of memories from her sisters, voice mails from friends’ moms, and even poetry sent to a friend from his dad, she realized that having an archive of this audio was an important aspect of the work. “It’s like, oh, here’s something that is preserved. At least I have this 13 minutes saved.”

This installation was recently the topic of conversation between Diaz and independent curator Ikram Lakhdhar. The talk complemented the Getty Research Institute’s current scholar theme of migration and touched on shared experiences of immigration, parental expectations, growing up between cultures, and the power of audio.

“When you’re listening to other people trying to get in touch with their family, it hits a bit differently,” said Diaz. “I’ve noticed that this experience often makes visitors think about how they stay in touch with their own family, and perhaps prompts them to reach out.”

After the talk, audience members had the opportunity to record messages and handwrite letters to loved ones. For Ibraheem Ali, whose parents immigrated to the U.S., this was an opportunity to write to his father. Ali usually texts or calls, but in this case, a “physical letter has a little bit more meaning and power to it,” he said.

“Texting is great, emails are great, but I feel like they just get lost in the shuffle of everyday life,” said Aisha Khansia, who took time to write a letter to her sister on the East Coast. “When I write someone a letter, it also forces me to get all my thoughts down and then just send it off.”