Andrea Motta: 1st Moments in Greece
© Andera Motta
In search of home
“You have to understand that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than land. No one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore” wrote Warsan Shire, a Kenya-born migrant to London, in a poem titled “Home”. (http://seekershub.org/blog/2015/09/home-warsan-shire/)
Home is what refugees have to abandon, leaving behind their shattered pasts in a hope to find better futures – or to merely escape death.
My home is in Ukraine, in a region whose population in two years grew by 300 thousand “internally displaced persons”, a euphemism for the refugees that fled war in the Eastern part of my country – one out of nine people seen in the street. They fled from shells, bullets and mines, trying to escape torture, blood and death. Leaving their ruined homes. Leaving behind their shattered pasts.
Andrea Motta lives in Greece. People in her images had just crossed the Aegean Sea and landed on Lesbos – the nearest EU piece of land available to them. Their homes have contracted to the belongings they are carrying. Plastic bags protect their possessions against the seawater.
They are standing with their backs toward the sea they had to sail, towards their shattered pasts back there across the water – facing their future. Their faces betray no joy, no carefree smiles or relief. They are conscious of the long way ahead, with more trials and adversities, more pain and new challenges. At least there will be no bombs falling from the sky, no shells or mines.
Andrea Motta's expertly composed images help us share these emotions. The repeated setting adds pressure: the sea, the horizon, a patch of bare land, people looking straight into the camera with the same expression: anticipation, apprehension and hope.
Their search for a new home has just begun.
© Igor Manko Exhibition co-curator