Abstract
My eyes hurt with the shining bright lights. Malika, Ahmad, Mahmoud. The sand shifts as the water trickles, shaping letters. Noman, Safi, Tamira, Ghulam. A shiver goes down my spine. Kataf. Selam. Shadi. Ghulam, Nabi, Sidi, Sissoko. I am immersed in the art installation from the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, currently on show at the Fondation Beyeler, a contemporary art museum in Basel, Switzerland. The installation, called Palimpsest, is dedicated to all refugees and migrants who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean in the search of a better, safer life in Europe. The title of the exhibition project, Palimpsest, comes from an ancient Greek word, referring to manuscript scrolls that are reused over time, where some of the original text can still be visible underneath new layers of writing. Such manuscripts offer insights and information on older texts, a form of knowledge gaining. The exhibition weaves an overlapping of names together on 66 stone slabs: some are engraved in the stone slabs in fine sand. These are names of persons who have died prior to 2010. On top of these names, drops of water appear to form letters of additional names of refugees and migrants who died between 2011 and 2017, which dissolve again, described by the museum as a ‘constant cycle of inscription and erasure’.1 The artist herself describes the water drops as ‘tears’, the moment of disappearance signifying the last breath of a dying person, and the (re)-appearance as birth (Salcedo 2022). The sign at the entrance to the door warns that the installation is a site of mourning, memory and commemoration and very fragile. It is possible to walk around, but not on the names, so as not to disturb the water and sand as the cycle of names continues. So I step over names. Over lives lost. Malak. Bakr. Behzad. Azizi. More names emerge. Yosef. Semret. Only to be replaced as the sands shift. Elaha. Another Azizi. Tesfe. Aman. Muntaha. Halilin. Asma. It mesmerises like it shocks.
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