Where the body becomes territory and territory becomes exile

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This series investigates the intertwined experiences of estrangement from the body and estrangement from the land. Through charcoal, ink, and pen on fragile rice paper, the drawings explore how individuals can become foreigners to their own physical existence and to the territories that once defined belonging. The work reflects on deportation not only as a political act, but also as a psychological, historical, and existential condition.

 

While genocide represents the most extreme form of this expulsion, the series also considers other forms of displacement: migration, illness, uncertainty, social fragmentation, and political discourses that increasingly sever human beings from their roots, memory, and community.

 

Several works are informed by the historical documents and photographs of Armin T. Wegner, whose testimony of the Armenian genocide remains a crucial witness to the violence of forced removal. Other drawings respond to contemporary documentation from Gaza, as well as to broader histories of deportation, exile, bodily vulnerability, and collective dispossession. Rather than illustrating specific events, the series seeks to evoke the fragile threshold where body, territory, memory, and identity become inseparable.

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A collection of drawings on rice paper, 32 cm × 24.5 cm.

     

  

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