Infiltrations
In Infiltrations, Migliorati explores borders as both physical barriers and political constructs. The series takes its cue from water seeping through walls and ceilings, finding its way into spaces where it is not meant to be. Using ropes to recreate the irregular patterns of water damage, Migliorati turns infiltration into a metaphor for the crossing, erosion and disruption of boundaries. What appears at first to be a structural defect or a problem to be contained becomes an opportunity to rethink the divisions that determine where we belong and who we are.
The white version of Infiltrations (2012) takes on a specifically political meaning. The infiltrating presence is the refugee or stateless person, whose existence challenges the relationship between identity, nationality and territory. The white ropes refer to the Nansen passport, introduced by the League of Nations in 1922 in response to the mass displacement and loss of citizenship that followed the First World War. Russian exiles, Armenian genocide survivors and minorities displaced by the collapse of Europe’s empires were among those left without national protection. The passport offered them a means of crossing borders, but not a new nationality. As Hannah Arendt later argued in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the predicament of the stateless exposes a fundamental paradox of human rights: supposedly universal, they become precarious without membership of a political community.
This work received a special mention at the Talent Prize 2013.
WORK:
Infiltrations, 201, rope, 173 x 200 x cm
EXHIBITIONS:
In tempi perfetti, Galleria Marcolini, Forlì, 2020
Press release: Silvia Giambrone
Infiltrations, VBM 2010, Berlin, 2012
Press release: Valentina Benedetta Marinone