Mezomaro

In 2009, I visited Lampedusa declared by mainstream news as the site of an ‘invasion’. What I found was a haunting invisible presence. In fact, the ‘clandestine invaders’ were nowhere to be found due to the militarised operations that had them transported to detention centres even before they touched land.
The only islanders who had direct contact with the migrants and asylum seekers were the fisherman at sea, and their vision differed greatly from the stories propagating through conventional newspapers and news channels.

Though the work moves from a specific place, here the name is omitted and substituted with a simple initial L. insofar as it is intended not to represent so much itself, but rather the spatial concept of a portal, somewhere within the Mediterranean Sea and extending to the whole Mediterranean territorial area, where in fact, countless people, having left often dire situations desirous of better lives, live illegitimate lives, almost as if vanishing from sight.

Mezomaro, b/w single channel video, 7′
Year: 2016

Exhibited at: Juntos Aparte, BienalSur, Cúcuta (CO), 2019, Frith Street Gallery, London (UK), Loop Discover Prize, 2017, Museu de les Cultures del Món, Barcelona (E) and Migration World Cinema, Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem (NL).