Victim homage

One in 122 people in the world are forcibly displaced! Source: UNHCR

 The project Victim is a collective, interactive project by interdisciplinary artist Eleni Exarchou, conceptually dealing with forcible displacement and the ruthless violation of Human Rights. It is a reminder of the fate of millions of immigrants and refugees, attempting to escape wars, persecution, and/or poverty, ultimately ending up in inhumane conditions. Most importantly, it is a homage to the innumerable deceased, innocent men, women, and children! A requiem to the identified and unidentified victims, to those who are now just names, or even worse, numbers on toe tags!

The process followed for the creation of this work is equally important with the final result. Collecting signatures from people around the world, signing for deaths not next to them but far away, forms a major part of the concept. One signature on each toe tag recording the death of an immigrant or refugee. Participants denote awareness of the current migration phenomenon, globally mapped on 4 major routes. Their signatures function as an act of solidarity, love, and companionship, as a realization that similar tragic events happen daily world-wide.

My intention is to raise feelings of empathy and compassion for all vulnerable people, living under perpetual danger and inhuman conditions leading to premature deaths. In sharing the same feelings and attitude towards the problem, participants become members of a wider humanitarian community, co-creating the artwork.

The signed toe tags, which refer to Global Indifference as the cause of death, will be attached to woven, hand-painted yarns in white and black color: white symbolizing the death of children, black that of adults. Knitted randomly like an automatic surrealist or ‘Dada’ poem, the yarns symbolically form incomprehensible texts, symbolically expressing anxiety and sorrow. These minuscule modern epitaphs –knits and tags– become fragments of an installation that can expand ad infinitum, conceptually following the never-ending route of today’s deep humanitarian crisis.

The work will evolve in phases and may be presented in a variety of forms. It will be accompanied by audio interviews taken from philosophers, scientists, writers, and other people across the world, expressing their views on the scorching subject they signed.

I want my project to be peaceful, to pinpoint the apathy and indifference that unfortunately prevail, in an attempt to seek solutions. This is not a project for the past or the present. It is a project for the future that will expand as other people interact. My wish is to involve as many people as possible around the globe. The victims are not dots on a map or mere numbers on paper. Beyond the raw statics, the victims are human beings, just like the rest of us; human beings with life stories!

Description of the project: Victim, Eleni Exarchou and Bia Papadopoulou