Family. Who counts as “family”? In the obvious sense, anyone who has a genetic relation to us. What of others, though? What of the relations we forge through other forms of kinship? And what happens when the bond is corrupted or severed? Or when the family system is not a source of peace and joy, but dysfunction and pain?
And what to make of the concept of “family” in the extended sense, in terms of communities such as “nation-states”? The anthropologist Benedict Anderson documents the invention and growth of nation-states as a product of media, originally printing. Once mass-scale printing became available, institutions could use the written word to target and define a mass audience despite geographic distance. Rulers could organize enormous or scattered populations into what Benedict called an “imagined community” by using common language rather than the languages of the elite. To quote Anderson, “...members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”
In this anthropological sense, “family” as a concept includes unknown members, such as tombs of unknown soldiers, who may not actually belong to the local community or nation-state. The concept also includes forms of kinship such as adoption, where a stranger becomes an accepted part of the clan. As someone with adopted relatives, this was the case in my own family system. It was also the case that certain family members, genetically related to me, were more like strangers despite living under the same roof. This estrangement is a major reason StudioTumazi Merchandise focuses on community. From the products themselves to the words you've read thus far, my hope is that your experience of the brand makes you feel welcomed and wanted; that you feel genuine belonging; and that the artistry symbolizes these dynamics each time you experience them. The journey to get here has been turbulent and intimidating, but the StudioTumazi brand is symbolic of the power within each of us to construct our own kin network of honesty, integrity, and yes, even a kind of family: the StudioTumazi family.
