This artwork was originally commissioned by ‘Centre for Creative Practices’ as part of the 'The New Voices of Ireland Award'. ‘An Anthology of Displacement’ has recently been selected for the exhibition Breaking Borders at the Gallery of Modern Art, Waterford.
Time, memory and borders were strong themes in many of the testimonies I collected, so I suspended the words upon ticking clock mechanisms. Anthology of Displacement, (2019), comprises of several glass vessels, each tries to synchronise with its neighbour, but is forever separated by the invisible glass border.
My work tells the stories of people who live life on the border - be that the edge of a geography, an identity, or even time. For the new series of works, I invited personal stories from migrants and newcomers who have crossed physical and mental borders.
Each text sculpture tells the story of an individual who feels they live life in between two places. Some have moved by choice and economic migration, and some have been forced to move due to war or other circumstances outside of their control. Although there is a big difference between these two types of migration, both can give insight into the intangible, unspoken forces of home, borders, place, duality and otherness. In particular it was important to find out the human side of their story - in contrast to impersonal reports about migration.
My research platform www.humanarchiveproject.com is a portal for the public to anonymously submit their stories. I also interviewed individuals, and took part in meetings of asylum seekers. (Some who are living in the controversial Irish Direct Provision scheme, and others have now naturalised and integrated into society.) Many refugees expressed a sense of imprisonment when their rights were lost in their home countries, and in many cases more so since arriving in Ireland.
The vessels I use were inspired by the alchemistic and olfactory world of Arabic perfumes, called minyak attar (or 'essential oil' in Malay language), which are used in the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca - another kind of migration. Migrants may describe their transitions as a pilgrimage away from misfortune and towards hope.
