The work is a participatory performance and installation with threads, executed at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 2024.
While writing on this project, 29,589 migrants were recorded as missing in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. This sea, the Central Mediterranean route, has been a witness to history, connecting and dividing the riparian states sharing the Mediterranean coast. It has enabled centuries of human mobility and cultural exchange between the African and European continents. Despite the advancements in naval transit safety, modern bureaucracy and regulations urge many individuals and families to undergo clandestine and risky crossings in small vessels.
One peril of the hazardous journey from South to North is a current split at the Sicilian coast into a double circuit with reverse flow. The upper stream revolves in the Tyrrhenian Sea, while the lower stream flows around Malta. It turns back towards the Tunisian coast until it crosses the initial west stream again and continues to the North and East. Its power is a primordial danger to longitudinal sea travels set to the North.
This infinite flow, with its incredible transformative power, moves vast amounts of water and all kinds of flotsam to the North African shores. The plastic waste, a symbol of our environmental crisis, from all over the Mediterranean washes up on Kerkennah Island. Yet, people collect it and transform the garbage with thermo-baric processes into denim fiber, a beacon of hope for the local economy that the former waste will return to Europe as garments.
“Walk the Line” – The Central Mediterranean Stream is a walk performance that counts 1,300 kilometers of the most dangerous central route, cutting the double circuit into two halves. Each step is measured in denim threads, an upcycled product made of maritime plastic from all over the Mediterranean Sea. The kinetic variations of transparency and shades of blue remind us of the transversal movements of waves. At the same time, the density of colors will increase with each walk.
The work invites us to meditate on the multi-layered meanings and multidimensional interpretations of this hazardous border that can separate or reunite families, friends, and loved ones forever, as it has connected African and European cultures and economies for many centuries.
