29 Tears

Exhibited at Moving Poets Berlin
2020

Concrete, Pigment, Polyester, Glass, Textiles

A 2 and a 9 abstractly define a terrible tragedy; 29 young Vietnamese people suffocate during a journey from Spain to the UK— we shudder and turn away. Causality of population flows, border figures of human rights, the defenseless in states of exception, the stateless between the boundaries of international rights— we resort to concepts that shield us, transferring responsibility to the collective.A true narrative, a story of people, of “beings,” whose dreams and hopes vanish within the paradox of nation-states, sinks in the entanglement of our own dialectics and fictions. In the face of global crises, we turn to familiar means, striving to optimize systems, build bridges, or perhaps we pray and meditate to feel more deeply, yet the suffering, the catastrophe of the individual, remains beyond our grasp, disappearing somewhere as a mere number, measurable and statistically certified. And yet, their innocent souls align within the collective trauma of fallibility, of guilt and absolution, within this structure of the immeasurable, yet inherently human: the transience of all things.

The tragic accident involving 39 Vietnamese migrants occurred on October 23, 2019. These migrants were found dead in a refrigerated truck container in Essex, England, after being transported from Belgium. The victims, who had been hoping for a better life in the UK, died from suffocation and hyperthermia due to the conditions within the sealed container. This incident led to an international investigation and subsequent convictions of several individuals involved in the trafficking ring responsible for the tragedy.