The Flood (2021–22)
Please note: Some viewers may find this installation and its violent theme disturbing.
In debates concerning migration, certain words and metaphors often get repeated and harden positions. Water is one such metaphor: ‘migrants flood into Europe, flooding the continent, breaking national borders and threatening to submerge our culture.’ The water metaphor is not neutral. Once adopted by the media and politicians, it leads to increasingly stringent asylum policies.
The irony is that water poses an enormous threat to the thousands of refugees wanting to reach the Netherlands. People in dinghies risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean. People try to survive the winter in primitive tents on the Aegean coast. For them, water is not rhetoric but a potentially deadly force.
Tina Farifteh was born in Tehran and left for the Netherlands when she was 13. As an artist and impact strategist, she tries to understand and visualise the dominant discourse on migration. She specifically questions the tendency to portray refugees as ‘natural disasters’.