First of November me and my son started our road trip from Amsterdam to Dakar – via France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania – in a beautiful Mercedes classic.
We will stay with family and friends along the way, all Senegalese migrants. It is a continuation of Presence in Absence, with a more personal approach.
I am showing “Presence in Absence” in the window of Amsterdam’s best bookstore: Athenaeum at the Spui in Amsterdam’s city center, till Thursday October 30. Go and have a look and buy the book!
At the Dak’art Biennale I will present my multimedia installation “Presence in Absence” at the Residency of the Dutch Embassy in Fann Residence, Dakar. The opening is on Thursday May 8 at 17.30 and the exhibition is running till May 18.
‘Presence in Absence’ is a reality that many migrants and their families are facing in both Europe and Africa. Families are being separated for many years and as a result of undocumented status often not capable to travel back. People are holding on to memories, tangible in the form of photos; carried with them or present in the privacy and intimacy of their (bed-)rooms.
We did a successful projection, September 10 2013!:
Past and present will be intertwined in a one time projection of two minutes on a passing cruise ship on Amsterdam’s IJ waterfront.
Together with visual artist Ellert Haitjema I will project a short film onto a passing cruise ship: archive images of migrants who left Amsterdam by the IJ water for South America hundred years ago. With this project the subject of migration is being presented in a new light.
The projection will be visible as the ship sails into view, allowing past and present to intertwine.
It can be seen from the quay in front of EYE Film Institute on Tuesday September 10 at 21:00. Sandra den Hamer, CEO EYE will welcome you and will give a brief introduction.
We did a successful try out in August:
Thanks to: Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Sem Presser Archive, EYE Film Institute, Beam Systems.
For Amnesty International’s European campaign When you don’t exist
I have traveled to Tunisia to photograph and film stories of migration from North Africa to Europe.
The result will be presented as a multimedia installation in the public space at the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 26-30, 2013. From there it will travel to different European countries. The final presentation will be at the European Union in Brussels, end 2013!
I have traveled to Tunisia to photograph and film stories of migration from North Africa to Europe for Amnesty International’s European campaign When you don’t exist. The result will be presented as a multimedia installation in the public space in different European countries and at the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2013.
The next coming months I will be working in Amsterdam Zuidoost on extraordinary lives of African migrants, living in Zuidoost. I will work in the CEC at Ganzenhoef. I will present the work I made in West Africa, as well as the work in progress on the African diaspora in Amsterdam Zuidoost.
On the tree by the entrance of the Institute, the passer-by sees a continuous, steady stream of names of African men, moving up the trunk and branches. Around the same imposing tree, the passer-by hears the sound of the surf of the West African ocean, which gradually blends into a recording of immigrants singing, mourning the passing of one who was lost. Cause and effect follow each other in a fitting and poetic way. Both image and sound emphasise the continuity of the phenomenon that is immigration.
Around the tree there are photos Judith Quax took in West Africa of the windows in the rooms of men who had focused their gaze on Europe, form images that represent a poetic glimpse, full of expectation.
At the Dakar Biennale of 2008, Judith Quax presented work on the same theme with posters in the public space. Her work was published in the NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, accompanied by a text of Salah M. Hassan.
The projection is in collaboration with visual artist Ellert Haitjema.
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