Crossing Borders
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Becoming European
Greek Borders. Refugees and immigrants are hiding behind trees and bushes lurking for the border guards' movements, looking for the moment that they’ll escape their attention.
They squeeze their few belongings into tiny backpacks and they wearing one piece of clothing over the other, in order not to carry many things in their backpacks and get tired from the weight and the walking.When they cross the border, they throw away the worn clothes and keep the best, trying to escape from the suspicious eyes of the locals and the border police. They are struggling to create a new image that will not respond to that of the immigrant or of the refugee, in order to avoid control, to identify their self inside the construction of a new identity which is modeled from the new country’s cultural and national context by achieving a relevance of external characteristics in their very first step and move on. The clothes become an expression elements and the body becomes an integral part of the effort for this new identity.
Elena Efeoglou, Secret path at the Greek-Albanian borders, 2015 ©
Elena Efeoglou, Crossing Border -Becoming European, 2015 ©
installation view
Venetian Fortress (Fortezza) Rethymno, Crete
Venetian Fortress (Fortezza) Rethymno, Crete