Very Invisible People
As a daughter of refugees who fled Europe after WWII, for Batia Shani, the current migrants and refugee crisis echoes an existential situation which is engraved in her body and soul.
the
centerpiece of the installation is embroidered bundles made of scraps
of used clothes which carry the memory of the body who used to wear
them, stacked in a wooden structure that resembles a boat. The image
of a boat is a very loaded one, as it contains the memory of the
journey Shani’s parents made after WWII from Europe to Palestine.
Parts
of metal fence serve as the basis for a wall piece. The metal is
covered by another layer in the shape of an archetypical house made
of cardboard, like a mark of a house, on which the artist places
unwoven
children’s vests. These vests were originally knitted to wrap and
protect children, to keep them warm. But something went wrong
–unwoven
and damaged, they can no longer serve their purpose. The mixture of
materials that juxtaposes the cold, metallic material with the soft
and warm wool, separated by the cardboard, creates a system of
opposites.
The
third main piece is a readymade fridge cardboard box that the artist
found near her studio around the time that the
bodies of 39 Vietnamese
were found in the trailer
of a refrigerator lorry in the UK. In addition to pasting
newspapers clippings and embroidered envelopes, Shani perforates the
cardboard around the caption
NO FROST and threads are coming out of the holes.
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