Technique: speakers, media players, amplifiers, voice, text

Swiss Art Awards 2016
Basel, Switzerland
http://bak.admin.ch

June 14–19, 2016

"We'll Walk in the Rays of a Beautiful Sun" is an installation dealing with the ever-growing tragedy of migrants from Africa and the Middle East attempting to cross the Metiterranean in the hopes of starting a new life in Europe. The title is taken from The Five Stairsteps song "Ooh Child" and seemed to reflect for me the basic desire of these people to just walk in peace somewhere, away from the war and poverty and pervasive chaos in their home countries.

I used text from The Migrants' Files, a project which attempts to keep a record of all deaths associated with migration to Europe (this could mean deaths in attempting to cross the Mediterranean, or deaths once in Europe). Each of the entries from a table dating back to 2000 until the time of the exhibition were written on a sheet of A4-size black paper. In addition, I recorded my voice reading the more detailed entries from the table, which I then played back over four loudspeakers in the installation space.

Through this piece I wanted to draw attention to the plight of these people.

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