photo by Massimo Marini see gallery and read description of the art project
multimedia installation, Human Rights Institute gallery, Kean University, Union, NJ,
Feb 1 - June 20 2018 Mon-Thu: 11 am - 6 pm, Friday: 11 am - 4 pm, opening Feb 1 5-7pm
curated by Neil Tetkowski
"Images of men, women and children packed on makeshift boats risking death at the mercy of the waters of the Mediterranean can not help but change the consciousness and sensibility of all of us.
Processing through art this nothing less than momentous tragedy, can be meaningful. As an artist, I feel a deep need and ethical responsibility to do so.
Nevertheless, with this site-specific work, I have attempted to represent not solely a physical journey - that of those who are forced to risk their lives in hope of a different destiny, but also an interior journey, an interior journey of transformation which every man and woman may have to undertake in order to overcome anything that does not allow us to be completely human.
A transformation only possible through the encounter with and acceptance of that which is different, unknown and so to be feared -the threat that the stranger represents in our collective unconscious, which implies the recognition in others of our shared humanity without which a truly just world is not possible
Remains of what was once a shelter, fragments of everyday objects caught in ripped nets, adrift after a shipwreck, create a sort of theatrical setting which convey feelings of displacement and laceration. From the darkness of a lifeless, desert -like landscape, the viewer is channeled along a path which finally leads to the encounter with those who, having braved death, can now tell us with words and expressions of their present lives. The video at the end of this imaginary journey features the Togolese migrante, a victim, like many others, of xenophobic intolerance, whose wounding triggered the violent events that took place in Rosarno in 2010. "
Franca Marini, January 2018