Migrant Soil
Installation, video, sound, soil, fabric
2026
Migrant Soil explores migration through land, memory, displacement, and the unequal conditions that determine access to space.
The work begins with soil removed from the ground and placed onto fabric, transforming it into a migrant material: a fragment of land that can be carried, displaced, and held elsewhere. Enclosed within a structure covered in translucent fabric, the soil occupies a territory that can be perceived from the outside but cannot be entered.
From within the structure, a video of my body in the Mediterranean Sea is projected through the translucent surface. I grew up knowing the Mediterranean through its proximity, its air, and its presence, while never having the freedom to access it. Entering the sea became a way of reclaiming a landscape that had remained both intimate and unreachable.
Alongside the image, my voice recounts experiences of detention, denied entry, and deportation. Image, light, and sound pass through the walls of the structure even as the physical space remains inaccessible.
The work exists within this tension between containment and leakage, proximity and distance, displacement and return. The body encounters borders while its image crosses them. The voice escapes. Memory escapes.
Migrant Soil asks what we carry when a place becomes inaccessible, and how land, memory, and presence continue to exist when returning is no longer simple.
Presented
JUST! Symposium — Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice, Italy, 2026
Sound
Andi Dhima
Video
Ludovica Anzaldi
