As the migrants begin to settle, you see structures arise: in some works, there are rows of tents; here there are fences. So these structures start to emerge as counterpoints to the watery expanse of the journey, and the barrenness of migratory landscapes.

The media always gave two impressions of this migratory experience. One on hand, anxiety—the endless flows of refugees, like invaders—that keep coming and coming in droves. On the other hand, there is containment—these structures that hold them, pin them, keep them confined and in place (and consequently reassure citizens and so-called stable populations).

The cavity is an important concept for the artists, and they explore this in many other works. They consider their exile a kind of cavity, where they live a cavity, even the Gulf is a kind of cavity. Here in this work, the cavity introduces a sense of a kind of trans-dimensionality that occurs in the works. It is like a threshold in the painting.

All the images in Where To!... consistently try to destabilise a typically Western idiom of representing events by disrupting it with Eastern references and techniques. In this work, we see symmetry and framing, with references to Persian architecture and ornamentation.

You see here also architectural references to the fragmented mirror technique used in Persian shrines and palaces, called ‘aina kari.’ You see how the chain mail of the fence morphs into this fragmented mirror moment, like a glitch coming from an ancient Persian inflection into the work.

So there is a very palpable tension between this depth, the all-or-nothing vortex of the consuming black hole, versus the fractured, minute surfaces of the repeated aina kari which plays off light and reflection.