(In)visible Landscapes of Migration: Corporality of the Image in The Passage
(In)visible Landscapes of Migration: Corporality of the Image in The Passage

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with a visual representation of forced migration in its specific spatial and temporal geopolitical manifestation near the borders of Croatia from 2015 until today by focusing on The Passage, a collection of memorial portraits of migrants who lost their lives in the bordering regions of Croatia. The text will demonstrate that forced migration can be seen not only as an exile from one’s homeland but can also be attributed as the act of prevention of access in a material sense (by preventing entry to a given country in search of protection) and in a symbolic sense (by obstruction of the right to appear and assemble). This way, we see exile not as a centrifugal force of displacement but as a rhizomatic, meshed movement of potential material and visual techniques of entry and deportation. The paper will advocate those practices that help to establish migrant presence at the borders of Europe not as an aberration but as an occurrence that requires systemic changes in power relations of representation by rearticulating imaging techniques of migrant (in)visibility beyond the tropes of either victimization, generalization or absence.

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