MIGRATION

Since many years I have been working as a volunteer for several organisations who were helping refugees in their search for support, housing and work.
People are fleeing was, violence and poverty and they are looking for better living conditions. It is often an act of desperation! Someone doesn”t leave his or her native soil, family and friends if their home is a good place to live.
The experience of these migrants were often unimaginable. Refugees risk their life to get to a place where it is hopefully better. Often it is a journey to life and death.

Their lives hang by a thin wire. Staying in their native country is a daily confrontation with a possible death. During their journey to another country it is often also a “survival journey” that sometimes ends tragically, as we all know of the boat refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.
The experiences of refugees inspired me to create this installation. A coarse clay vessel holding delicate porcelain elements, representing the precarious lives of those escaping.
“By a silk thread” is a work that employs the language of ceramics to illustrate the extreme difficulties of migrants fleeing conflict. The fragile porcelain objects symbolize vulnerability. They are captures by a carrier that hangs from a thin wire and seems to float aimlessly in space.