It is urgent to tell this story!

My name is Pietro Fedele. I will not define myself a designer nor an artist, but rather a creative, a storyteller. My studies led me to become a drawer, a multimedia and industrial designer, and they have done nothing but suggesting me the means to tell the stories that I deem are worth telling. Today’s story is on the refugees.

Nowadays we hear about them every day, everywhere, but the image that flashed continually in my head and asked to be expressed, was that of a mass of people without identity. They are just the refugees, the nameless, the rescued, the migrants, the invaders… and I said to myself: I must tell their story!

Interviews? Reportage? Photographs? None of that. What I wanted to realize was instead an itinerant art installation, in motion, as are refugees.

The subject I wanted to deal was that of identity and of political, social and geographical barriers.

How to gather it all into a work that would not dwindle into banal narration?

MY PROJECT

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The event will take its first step (sure and certain) in the city of Pescara in April 2017.

The event in Pescara is divided in two parts.

The first part will be held in the streets of the city center, where small groups of mannequins without a body, but just "floating" clothes standing in significant poses will be exposed without specific description.

«Who are they?» I hope, passers-by will wonder this when looking at these tragic and quiet figures that, perhaps only by their clothing, will recall the refugees. From this fundamental question sprouts the title of the project "WHRTH", a compound word of the consonants in the question: Who are they? This is the question we should actually ask ourselves when we see those pictures, news and videos. It is an initial provocation. I removed the vowels from the title, just as I removed the identity from the figures.

The reactions of passers-by will then be filmed to make a short movie, subsequent to the happening. It will allow the sharing of the happening on the web, so as to extend the experience to everyone who was not able to attend it live.

The second part of the project will take place inside the covered market of piazza Muzii in Pescara, at the charity event organized by AVSI. For this occasion, I would like to make three installations that will touch the issues of barriers seen as cages, as claustrophobic constraints.

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In the first installation, figures "hanging from a fence with barbed" appear. They recall the anguished “climbings” on border barriers. When we see the pictures taken on site, these figures - that I will purposely call the hung - seem still, impotent, crucified, dramatic.

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A ragged semi-transparent tarp stands between the visitors and the work: another barrier, a translucent curtain full of meanings.

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In the second, a sole figure, there is a migrant with his hands tied behind his back. He is wearing a life belt which is, in turn, surrounded by a ring of barbed wire. His feet are in the Mediterranean Sea, represented on a map of Europe on the ground. The life belt gives only the illusion of saving but its tied arms, giving a sense of helplessness, the barbed wire and the geographic barriers are real constraints that make these crossings: “the crossings of death”.

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In the third, a group of refugees is covered, harnessed, cold, seated, surrendered on a mattress, oars in hand, as if they were on a raft. Around them there are barbed barriers with slogans inciting to shutting and rejection.

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What will happen after the stage in Pescara?

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The event in Pescara will just be the springboard for an exhibition that will travel to other cities, whose municipalities or non-profit and cultural associations will decide to host the installations and continue sharing with us the storytelling.

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HOW WILL THE MONEY RAISED BE USED?

The money raised with the crowdfounding will be used to buy materials to compose the mannequins, to rent a working space equipped with tools for assembling the work, to purchase all the necessary materials to complete the installations (clothes, tarps, blankets and more, will come as far as possible without money, not to burden the budget with extra costs but, when needed, they will be purchased at the flea market). The money will also cover the costs of transportation, the costs of production of graphics and video for the event and the cost of the lighting systems for the installations.

Pagina Facebook del progetto

WHRTH / art installation for refugees