Altered Landscapes

An immersive multimedia installation which tackles themes of trauma, displacement, personal narratives and landscape. The work is an intimate account of the personal experience of travelling through an unfamiliar landscape reminiscent of the experience of refugees. Through the use of video, photography, light and sound, Altered Landscapes aims to engage the viewer in a journey. It asks the viewer to navigate the different elements in the gallery space so as to be absorbed in the experiences and journeys of the refugees, in order to open up contemplation and discussion about the current situation in Europe, a place that that has become filled with militarised border control. For this exhibition delGado travelled to Greece, Macedonia and Calais to film, photograph and record the journeys taken by refugees. delGado has not filmed these ‘invisible’ people, who proliferate our media, but the places they have passed through. There are traces of their existence, fragmented experiences, fleeting moments and marks left on the land as they pass through to find safety. Inspired by the text The Metamorphosis by Czech writer Franz Kafka, the project centres on a personal diary from a narrator, a European subject, who is describing how his human identity is gradually being transformed into something else, as a response to the suffering he is viewing. These reflections are provoked by the events and debates of the last few years around the refugee crisis and are contextualised in a landscape which is strongly embedded in our collective imaginary, Greece with its Acropolis, the ancient citadel of Athens, and the birthplace of the democratic values and culture.