Roots installation reflecting on belonging, featuring collaborative artworks during Art Basel Miami Beach."

Roots

Installation

"My roots plunge into no one knows which ground. Nothing natural in me. Nothing coming from the earth. No sap. No possibility to blossom." — Emil Cioran (1911-1995), Romanian philosopher.

As a migrant who was involuntarily forced into exile due to violence in my country, I deeply resonate with the sense of otherness and uprootedness expressed by Cioran. From an early age, I was detached from the nurturing soil of my native roots. To blossom in unfamiliar landscapes, I was compelled to cultivate new "sap", crafting my own narrative, mastering foreign languages, and engineering fluid identities that transcend the limitations of my cultural background.  

Roots installation reflecting on belonging, featuring collaborative artworks during Art Basel Miami Beach."Roots installation reflecting on belonging, featuring collaborative artworks during Art Basel Miami Beach."Roots installation reflecting on belonging, featuring collaborative artworks during Art Basel Miami Beach."Roots installation reflecting on belonging, featuring collaborative artworks during Art Basel Miami Beach."

Roots is a personal reflection on belonging that took place during Art Basel Miami Beach Week in the Wynwood Art District of Miami.

The installation showcases my collection of collaborative artworks created in partnership with artists such as Olivier Goulet, Thomasie Giesecke, Aurore Tomé, Diane Pernet, Dan Salzmann, and Arnaud Bouchard, along with the personal works of Dominik Von Schulthess and Vincent Gagliostro.

This exhibition reflects on my lifelong commitment to pursuing a multidisciplinary collaborative creative practice that explores the DNA of our time.

Portrait Of My Time

Live Performance

Collaboration with Tara Shea aAnanda and Nikki Pike.

A Portrait of My Time is a live performance that stages the Simplest Surrealist Act, which according to André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto published in 1924, involved "going into a street with revolvers in hand and firing blindly into the crowd."

The artwork questions the United States’ status as the most heavily armed civilian population, where 9 million handguns, machine guns, and military assault rifles flood the streets annually, leading to the highest number of high school massacres worldwide.

A Portrait of My Time: Performance Art on Gun ViolenceA Portrait of My Time: Performance Art on Gun ViolenceA Portrait of My Time: Performance Art on Gun Violence

Having experienced gun violence firsthand, I carry the weight of that trauma. This personal history compels me to wonder, now as one of their own, why American families continue to bring weapons designed for war into our neighborhoods.

A Portrait of My Time confronts the unsettling contradiction of a nation that claims to protect its youth while subjecting them to the threat of gun violence in school, holding them hostage to a culture obsessed with firearms.

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