Mapping Global Refugee Migration and Displacement | 2015-ongoing
May 2017 | on the train going back to Copenhagen
You | a 16-year-old Muslim girl from Syria | I’m your big sister.
Two young boys wearing fake KKK headdresses made from white plastic bags, parading back and forth in the train carriage where we sit facing each other in silence.
Suddenly, you look me in the eye:
“We took the boat here. 60 people packed in a dinghy for 15. A gun would be put at our foreheads if we resisted getting on the boat. We fought and almost killed each other in the middle of the Mediterranean. But when the boat sank, the same people dragged my mom, my little sister and myself to shore. Otherwise...”
We both look outside the train window – you chew your fingernails; I swallow down memories.
The end of one journey is only the beginning of the next.
Related Exhibitions:
Homeless Souls | Louisiana MoMA | Humblebaek, Denmark | 2019
New Cartographies | Asia Society Texas Center, Houston | 2018-2019
the unwanted population | Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York | 2017
Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter | MoMA, New York | 2016
Migration Politics: Three CAMP exhibitions at the SMK | Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen | 2016
from the mountains to the valleys, from the deserts to the seas | CAMP Center for Art on Migration Politics, Copenhagen | 2015