Color photograph on cotton paper + audio
2005
There is an internal landscape,
a geography of the soul;
we search for its outlines
all our lives.
Those who are lucky enough
to find it easy like water over a stone,
onto its fluid contours,
and are home.
Some find it
in the place of their birth;
others may leave a seaside town, parched,
and find themselves refreshed
in the desert.
There are those born in rolling
countryside
who are really only at easy
in the intense and busy loneliness
of the city.
For some,
the search is for the imprint of
another;
a child or a mother, a grandfather
or a brother,
a lover, a husband, a wife,
or a foe.
We may go through our lives
happy or unhappy,
successful or unfulfilled,
loved or unloved,
without ever standing cold with
the shock of recognition,
without
ever feeling the agony
as the twisted iron in our soul
unlocks itself
and we slip at last
into place.
_Josephine Hart (Damage)
The work is an audiovisual installation that presents a series of photographs and the reading of the poem “Damage”, by the English poet Josephine Hart, in English and Portuguese by a group of people. The poem refers to the search for one's own place in the world and addresses the condition of being displaced, inviting the reflection on diaspora, migration and exile.
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