Yemen Contraflow

© Alixandra Fazzina

From October 7 to November 2

Yemen Contraflow
Alixandra Fazzina

Between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, the stretch of water separating the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula represents a microcosm of today’s worldwide flows of human traffic. No other place on earth has witnessed more cycles of conflict, forcing so many people into successive rotations in such a small space.

Contraflows of migrants and refugees move through a labyrinth of ever more dangerous routes, exchanging insecurities, jumping between continents, from one battlefield to another. Criss-crossing Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, journeys across the Gulf of Aden have become increasingly chaotic. Under spells cast by a near mythological smuggler, a generation of young men and women seeking to escape conflict, poverty and climate change, has been seduced by promises of better futures elsewhere. Promises that have, in turn, fuelled a new wholesale model of people trafficking. Known as tahriib, the travellers are drawn into a realm in which there is often complete disregard for life. A deadly human shuffle in which the odds are never favourable.

Journeying into this dangerous, clandestine world, “Yemen Contraflow” follows the inadvertent search for a allegorical people smuggler, who may or may not exist. Weaving together intimate photographs and texts, the work evokes how the fate and the personal stories of the thariib are symptomatic of both dreams and interminable conflicts. Reframing traditional refugee narratives, it sets out to challenge where fears of migration really stem from.

Meet Alixandra Fazzina on Saturday 11 October at 3:30 pm at her exhibition

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Les 7 lieux
1, boulevard Fabian Ware

Open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 1 pm to 6.30 pm,
Wednesday and Saturday from 10 am to 6.30 pm
and Sunday from 2 pm to 6 pm