Public accounts of the 2015 European waves of migrant entries were covered through an individualizing gaze on the refugee subject. The suffering of the refugee was witnessed from a distance, as a spectacle: images of crowded tents, boats overflowing with people, children dying on the Mediterranean shores.

TRACE: Tracing the Space of the Refugee Crisis turns this mediatized gaze outwards and scrutinizes the “spaces” in which people seek refuge. The works play with the Derridean notion of “trace” in creating a topography of the refugee crisis through metaphorical markers: the port, the stationed border patrols, the island roads, the swimming vests.