Borders don't have souvenirs
The borders don't have souvenir, they don't have the usual touristic shops with postcards and keyrings, they are “not-places”, where guns, soldiers and the long waits in those little customs of faraway worlds make these spaces hostile and exciting for a traveler who is looking for unexplored places. Other worlds, other thoughts, where pieces of forgotten stories linger in the air, ready to be told to curious ears.
The border between Guinea- Bissau and Senegal is a mysterious place, porous border and therefore useful for Colombian drug trade who quietly and daily arrives at the Bijagos islands to replenish the noses of all European. Here a silent war holds in check the institutions since 1982, when the MFDC ( Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance ), gave birth to a demonstration ended in a bloodbath.
One winter afternoon I was sitting there, in a small customs office, waiting for a stamp in the passport. A rope pulled over by an old man divided two nations whose relations are still deeply unstable. Try to imagine a rope, which alone kept separate two warring worlds from each other, where deep differences daughters of an unfinished colonialism have created cultural walls too high to be surpassed, at least for now.
This is the way I want to convey through my work, a rope, two worlds, a war.
