Salt as a poetics of migration and in/visibility

Description

A presentation of artworks using salt and other materialities as poetic forms of representation for stories of
migration. Through researching my own family’s migrant history, I became interested in how re-making
material forms might stand in for the lost, and invisible in migrant stories. Whilst we had a few family
heirlooms, some parts of our family had left their home countries with very little in the way of possessions.
Researching their journeys, trades and lives led to myself and my sister Rebecca making a series of artworks
with salt, which had featured in our family story. I then went on to do a PhD which explored salt as a feature of
other stories of migration. Through this I became interested in the way that salt can hold a poetics of migration,
and I also became engaged with the work of Édouard Glissant and his salt poems (Le Sel Noir, 1960). Salt is
intrinsically linked to past migrations, including the forced migrations of enslaved peoples. I will share some
salt artworks and discuss the potential of salt and other materialities to evoke and stand in for stories of
disappearances, absences, loss and grief in relation to migration and environmental crisis.

Period	24 Sept 2024
Event title	DISTERRA network: WORKSHOP ON CREATIVE AND ARTS-BASED METHODS
Event type	Workshop
Degree of Recognition	International