HAND LUGGAGE
Hbiba Ciao (*)
«Tomorrow when you'll wake up you
won't find me
oh darling goodbye, bye bye bye
Turn on the TV, maybe you'll see me
hopping on Italian ground».
[…]
«Be it that we see that paradise with
our eyes
oh darling goodbye, bye bye bye
be it that we drown and die without a
grave
my soul will come back to you
swimming».
To limit the freedom of movement of
human beings is one of the greatest current social injustices.
In the world, every two seconds a
person is forced to leave her or his own house due to conflict or
persecution.
After the shipwreck of Lampedusa on
October 3rd, 2013, in which 368 migrants died, there have been
increased efforts to identify the bodies of people who lost their
lives while crossing the Mediterranean.
Coroners, anthropologists and CSI-units
have started classifying objects, personal belongings, documents
found among the corpses of the migrants.
Today these objects tell stories that
their owners cannot tell anymore.
The long and difficult process that
leads to the identification of a body is crucial to allow families to
cope with their loss, in order to give back dignity to those human
beings who are at risk of becoming figures in the statistics of our
public debates.
Among the objects that are often found
on the corpses – usually in a pocket, in a backpack or even sown
into their clothes – there are small plastic bags containing sand
or soil from their home-country.
Because in the very moment when you
leave your country, your home, your beloved ones, hoping for a better
future, without knowing if and when you'll be back, the act of
carrying with you a few grams of soil is a powerful gesture that
connects you with your memories and your roots.
Over the past five years it is
estimated that at least 15.000 people have died on the route that
leads from North Africa to Italy.
THE ARTWORK
Every plastic-bag is accompanied by the
gelocation-coordinates of the area where the soil was retrieved. All
plastic bags look the same, the coordinates are numbers and letters.
This extreme uniformity aims at
stressing that there is no difference between one place and the
other, between one human being and another in the very moment in
which people migrate and leave their place of origin. Without knowing
whether they'll ever come back.
THE
COORDINATES
1.
21 ° 27'04.9''N 22 ° 38'03.6''E - Desert of southern Libya
2.
18 ° 22'24.1 "N 68 ° 50'34.6" W - Baia Hibe, Dominican
Republic
3.
35 ° 33'10.0''N 1 ° 11'47.6''W - Plage de Sbeaat, Algeria
4.
40 ° 53'11.2''S 173 ° 02'49.5''E - Tonga Bay Beach, New Zealand
5.
39 ° 49'56.0''N 9 ° 40'53.2''E - Barì Beach, Bari Sardo, Sardinia,
Italy
6.
36 ° 13'43.7''N N ° 26'57.0''E - Kaputas Pamphilia, Turkey
7.
33 ° 26'13.9''N 8 ° 54'48.9''E - Sahara sand, Zaafrene, Tunisia
8.
53 ° 26'23.0''N 10 ° 04'17.2''W - Mannin Bay, Connemara, Ireland
9.
35 ° 13'55.0''N 23 ° 40'42.5''E - Pahia Ammos, Paleohora, Crete,
Greece
10.
44 ° 17'40.3''N 9 ° 22'12.6''E - Cavi Beach, Cavi di Lavagna,
Liguria, Italy
11.
43 ° 46'37.8 "N 11 ° 13'41.1" E - Riva dell'Arno,
Florence, Italy
12.
14 ° 02'17.0''N 16 ° 43'32.6''W - Mboss, Senegal
13.
16 ° 02'33.4''N 108 ° 15'07.5''E - Danang Beach, Northern Vietnam
14.
42 ° 57'40.5''N 9 ° 27'06.8''E - Macinaggio beach, Corsica
15.
20 ° 05'01.7 "N 57 ° 49'31.4" E - Governorate of
al-Wusta, Oman
16.
20 ° 54'51.2''N 27 ° 37'28.6''E - Nubian Desert, Wadi Halfa, Sudan
17.
52 ° 35'54.1''N 13 ° 13'27.9''E - Baumberge, Heiligensee, Berlin, Germany
18.
26 ° 33'28.4''N 70 ° 44'00.3''E - Thar Desert, Janra, Rajasthan,
India
19.
51 ° 16'34.2''N 3 ° 01'28.9''E - De Haan, Belgium
20.
31 ° 04'39.5''N 3 ° 59'12.4''W - Dunes of Merzouga, Erfud, Morocco
21.
35 ° 30'47.2 "N 12 ° 33'27.1" E - Spiaggia dei Conigli,
Lampedusa, Italy
(*) “Hbiba Ciao” was written in
2011 by the Tunisian artist Bendir Man on the melody of “Bella
Ciao”