When planning a journey, we always seek the most direct route to our destination, aiming to avoid transfers, stops, and delays.
However, those who are forced to flee their countries because of political and economic circumstances, lack the privilege of choice in their routes and usually travel illegally. Their journeys typically do not involve the comfort of planes or trains, but they risk their lives trying to cross borders by walking or travelling on unsafe boats arranged by smugglers.
Bouchra Khalili, a French-Moroccan artist and scholar, sheds light on this reality in her project "The Mapping Journey" (2008-11), exhibited at the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice (until November 24th).
In her practice, Khalili employs collaborative storytelling methods with marginalized communities, particularly those excluded from citizenship. Showcased at the Arsenale, "The Mapping Journey" project evolved over three years along Mediterranean migration routes, engaging refugees and stateless individuals in transit hubs in Europe, North and Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Khalili's approach involves prolonged listening rather than direct interviews, allowing her collaborators to guide and narrate their experiences. The project comprises eight videos featuring single, uninterrupted shots, without any cuts.
The narrator's voice accompanies the viewer as their hand, wielding a permanent marker, traces the complex and perilous journeys on a map. Lines traced across oceans and borders show the routes of these people moving furtively, to avoid being spotted by systems of surveillance and border controls.
The narratives are poignant, depicting moments of despair in which the traveler had to hide, then family reunions upon arrival, or the struggle to find work, with one of the interviewees recounting his day-long job in Milan distributing flyers from 8.00am to 9.30pm, for a meager wage (30 euros).
The marker's trails on paper depict convoluted paths: journeys from Annaba to Marseille via Milan; from Jalalabad to Rome via Tehran and Debrecen; or from Skopje to Rome, a trip that by plane would take one hour and a half, that instead turns into a long ordeal, a journey that passes through Dhaka and Dubai. Other trajectories include Mogadishu to Bari and Béni-Mellal to Utrecht via Alicante and Barcelona.
Khalili then transformed these personal maps into her "Constellations" series. These geopolitical constellations, presented as white traces on a blue backdrop, reinterpret the narrated journeys as celestial patterns reminiscent of ancient astronomy and mythology.
By contemplating these constellations, viewers are invited to collectively imagine alternative notions of belonging. In a poignant tribute, cities along the routes become stars, representing both the migrants who succeeded in their journey and those who perished, those who were not rescued by the authorities, or were forcibly returned to their homelands.
While the cities on the constellations create an architectural tangible spot in space, the invisible migrants become like Castor and Pollux, the brothers who became the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini ("the twins"), they turn into parts of these constellations, stars in the vast firmament of life.
A textile piece entitled "Sea-Drift" featuring the Noth-West migration routes to the Canary Islands, including Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, El Hierro and Lanzarote, completes the installation at the Venice Biennale.
As Europe grapples with uncertainty regarding migrant policies, often resorting to deportation for those hoping to improve their lives elsewhere, "The Mapping Journey" project offers profound insights: Khalili tells us indeed that, if we were willing to listen and embrace rather than reject, these meandering, painful and harrowing journeys could transform into stellar narratives, symbolizing the eternal human quest for a better future.
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