Damier

Damier

Collaboration between Haleh Jamali and Monica De Ioanni

2021-22, Video projection, Loop, HD, 5.5 minutes, Black & White, for single channel projection

The three panel triptych video shows the struggle of a woman on both a personal and social level, from the beginning of the migration process to the end. This is accompanied by a soundtrack of crying, water movement and whispering in a 5- minute loop.

On the left, the figure symbolically is trying to take every possible piece of her belongings with her, but inevitably must leave parts behind. She consequently masks her own identity in the process by covering her face with a piece of clothing, while longing for a bit of her life that has been lost. It shows the hardship of leaving your home country, of abandoning home in search of a different future. The ultimate cost is losing pieces of the past.

In the centre, the closeup of a person`s foot walking back and forth represents suspension. Perhaps it's a voluntary or involuntary decision to move backwards or forwards. We do not see the walker, and their loss of identity makes them all but invisible.

The last video, on the right, shows a woman with her daily struggle before and after immigration looking for peace. The plane here acts as a metaphor for the journey undertaken in her life, which is now somewhere different from the start of the piece. Her past becomes a footnote for the new version of her life, but also the new version of herself.

These videos also challenges our mind and encourages us to also read the triptych from right to left, from last to first. This encourages us to view the piece as not one of loss, but cautious hope. The woman is thus seen collecting existing pieces of her past, and ultimately trying to fit all these pieces back together, moving from the broken to the whole.