Equillibrists Of Memory - The Debris of the World is the New Monuments

“Suddenly, the bigger vessel began to tilt.

The captain in that boat shouted, 'Balance! Balance! The boat's going down! Balance!” Muhidin Hussein Muhumed, shipwreck survivor, Hargeisa, Somalia.

"The Equilibrists of Memory'', 2018 is a series of twelve digitally manipulated studio photo self-portraits that incorporate via an AR app (iOS, Android) an audio video of the Aegean Sea, verses from the poem “Home” by British-Somali poet Warsan Shire and links to archival material to create a political allegory that addresses the forced displacement of thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing war, violence, and persecution in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa to cross the Mediterranean, one of the most hazardous routes to Greece and the EU. The portraits depict black-veiled figures balancing on their heads, precariously, a totemic assemblage of bundles of clothing, rugs, war artillery, debris from rocks, defaced statues, artifacts, and books. These heterogeneous fragments of what remains of the memory of a culture—a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging, a piece of homeland—symbolize the debris of humanity that emerges as a new monument.