MIGRANTS

Venice Biennale 2013

Fragile exhibition Fondazione Cini, Stanza del Vetro

The 20th century could also be described as a century of borders. Progress allows better border control and migrants have even more difficulty rebuilding their lives; they are penned in, locked out, controlled or, otherwise, victims of the system.

Migrants focuses on the psychological consequences, the feelings, the suppression, the painful inner processes. The form of Migrants is inspired by The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault. As well as a simple message in a bottle - an act of despair or of hope, a rebellion against the silence. The base is a boat (with a rubber boat deck) to which bottles are tied using cables. Inside each of them beats a membrane (moulded on an actual heart). The sound of each bottle is a voice and, all together, the ensemble is drowned out by the beating hearts.
The project aim was to raise public awareness about forces migration by engaging an audience of 250,000 exhibition visitors over a four month exhibition. Any refugee was interviewed under strict  anonymity. Today more than one in every hundred people are experiencing a situation of forced migration. This displacement from physical and psychological space created a suspended state of being. The sphere of the past is inaccessible, the future uncertain. Being enters a limbo state between danger and fragility fuelled by extreme emotion.

Numerous people leave their country and throw themselves like bottles into the sea towards a new unknown life. Those who traverse oceans on feeble ships are the primary inspiration for this work but it also speak to all those who have had to cross frontiers due to violence or destruction. The projects hopes to raise public awareness for forced migration by engaging an audience of 250,000 exhibition visitors over the four month exhibition. Any refugee will be interviewed under strict anonymity.