#exterminationborders

#exterminationborders
Digital photography and text
 
Agamben's texts and in particular State of Exception - Homo sacer II from 2003, have led me to investigate the keys to assimilation and submissive acceptance of the Foucauldian disciplinary society in which we find ourselves today. My latest work, Panòptico_frontera 601, revolves around legal abuses of power converted into border management. In it, images without bodies place us as the only complicit survivors.
 
The texts of this work allude to a conversation in which two sub-Saharan teenagers narrated their difficult and traumatic journey by boat from the African continent to the Spanish coast. One of them gave a descriptive and fluid story; the other added stage directions to the narrative that gave extra reality and rawness. These notes are what serve as a contrast to the silence of the image.
 
There are currently about 244 million immigrants in the world. There are thousands of people waiting at the borders, which are increasingly impassable. Between April and December 2017, some 5,500 people have been confirmed dead on marine migratory routes. The actual number is unknown, but it is more than likely that it far exceeds the official figure. The majority are women and children who have died at sea. They have no voice, they don't carry a suitcase.
 
Selected for the Vila Casas Photography Award 2020