CECILIA MANDRILE

As I am reading your questions 1 to 10, I realize that the answer to question 10 would necessarily return to interrogation 1, and this can easily become a circular discussion, but so is the nature of the art practice...
As you give us options for answering, I am approaching this writing disjointed from the questionnaire, a personal articulation of some process of reconstruction that yet follows (precisely) the same interrogations.

Even when the topic of this Triennial was ‘baptized’ as In Exile, reading the approach of the proposal and specially being an inhabitant of times where displacement becomes a global phenomenon, I understand here the concept of exile as any physical or emotional form of feeling ‘out of place’. Through displacements, exiles, emigrants, nomads, travellers, encounter an intimate as well as a collective process of ‘fragmentations’ that unveils their double position throughout their changing context: the position of being a protagonist, the position of being a witness, and on this the ‘awareness’ of the multiple perspectives for seeing.

In his essay ‘Travelling Theory’ Edward Said defined critical consciousness as awareness, “the awareness of the differences between situations, awareness too of the fact that no system or theory exhausts the situation out of which it emerges or to which it is transported.” I found this position of ‘awareness’ as a revealing encounter between the images and their displacement, as it is precisely the ‘awareness of the migrants’ wound’ that made possible the witnessing of the own process of work, reaffirming in this way, that this multiplied position acquired, is not other than a non-belonging position, a position ‘in between’.

Being myself interested in the installation work by migrant artists that involves -in different stages- the use of diverse forms of graphic arts, and departing from the topic of Exile/Displacement, I dare to draft a theory of incompleteness, an incompleteness that becomes evident when the art practice turns into a constant rehearsal process. This incompleteness may be an interesting point in the development of the relationship between recurrent images and their constant displacement in the process of work of many migrant artists, (between which I include myself). Departing from an intimate frame, my own migration, in the succession of encounters and abandons; construction, destruction and reconstructions, I could observe
how visual traces appear as cohesive elements in the reconstruction of the (own) transient experience.

Establishing boundaries seems easy, but to determine what is beyond them (or the reason of such an exclusion) is a rather more difficult task. In the context of the Tallinn Print Triennial (a Triennial that have opened the boundaries of the word ‘printmaking’ in the international panorama of graphic arts through their criteria of selection of works and the proposal of ‘global topics’), the problematic in the notion of the limits of the image and their ‘framing’ can be also matter of interrogation. I intend to relate the necessity of blurring the concept of the ‘limits of the image’ to that one of the extremes of a migrant life, as it seems impossible to accept that can be an only background for the figure. The notions of origin and final destination that are established in a journey seem not to be useful anymore. For migrants they change with the movement, and while the subject is in transit. Places and subjects transform; the impossibility of a true return to the ‘point of departure’, explain the necessity of a visual documentation that alleviates the void left by that experience. Later on this anthology of images will become a ‘settling point’ for further departures. Images can be revisited (in this way they may offer a possibility of a return of some sort.)

And it is precisely this possibility of multiple re-visions, multiple re-presentations, multiple re-constructions, re-visits, re-turns, as well as the intrinsic portability of the ephemera (where paradoxically the images of moving artists may settle), what may justify the graphic arts as a good companion of/while/in displacement. For migrants, time and space are subjective phenomenon, through the displacement in distance and space, image need to recover (or at least search for) ‘their place in the world’. However, this place is no longer ‘one’ but many. Here it is understood the emergence of multiplicity: multiple images and languages, and on this the possible encounter of a multiplied identity.

This problematic of displacement applied to subjects and images relates also to the constant transformations of what can be considered as a “first source” or a “final piece” which seem to be particular relevant to the graphic arts’ processes. The notion of “first source” (point of departure) and “final object” (arrival point) are mentioned in an attempt to look for the advent and the closure of these processes. The process of many artists dealing with graphic arts in their practice means a process of re-search (search for reconstruction?), a process that may depart from a single fragment, a fragment that may be translated on various techniques and surfaces, adapted to a new contexts. Here the process of translation has a double significance when considered in the practice of migrant artists: translation as a technical means to articulate an image in order to interpret its significance in changing contexts; translation as a means to move subjects and images from one place or condition to another.
Throughout the passage – the journey of subjects, the journey of images-, the concept of context become multiple and diverse, a complex web of encounters that involves not only the moving context where the work was thought and produced, but also that one that determined the perspective of the audience. Here one image leads to another, each trip to a new one. The constant search to adapt a recurrent image to multiple backgrounds may generate a Diaspora of fragments. This Diaspora is not only significant in terms of the dissemination of images (and memories) in a migrant’s life, but also often to the nature of the images. Each image may become a trace, a quotation to be understood only when completed by either expected or unpredictable surroundings. After all it may be only the sense of absence (and loss), the sense of ‘incompleteness’ that lead to the art (and any) re-search.
So to return to first and last questions, “does art possesses refuge like status in society?”
I would rather put it as art might be an intimate as well as a collective refuge in a displacement experience…. And “why an artist should tackle with the topic of exile? Why would it be interesting to make an artistic comment on theme of exile?”
In times when it is almost impossible to avoid the understanding of some form of displacement, I think it may be simply because of the inner necessity to articulate the experience in a personal language - intimate yet open to encounters- a language that may allow a visual form of translation: the translation of a wound.

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Said, Edward. The World, the Text and the Critic. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983:242
The Loss and the Challenge: “A secret wound, often unknown to himself, drives the foreigner to wandering”. Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. New York. Columbia University Press, 1991:5