The travelling exhibition ‘The Garden of the (In)visible’ is currently open to visitors in the Municipality of Hrpelje - Kozina, Slovenia. From 15 March it will be in Koper before arriving in Trieste in May and moving on to Geneva.

The project is part of anthropological research on the theme of migration carried out by the University of Primorska Koper and the University of Trieste, as part of the activities of T4E - Transform4EuropeAlliance.

Working collaboratively across borders, lecturers and students travelled between Croatia, Slovenia and Italy where they found and collected objects left by migrants in the woods or at the edges of towns. These things are abandoned after long and difficult journeys on foot by people from various backgrounds in Asia and Africa. They are both everyday objects used for eating, sleeping, protecting oneself from the elements and caring for oneself as well as artefacts that reveal an intimate and spiritual sphere. Casting these things aside and abandoning them leaves a record of a passage towards a new stage in life, a sign of rebirth. The piles of discarded things at the edge of the woods or by the roadside that we ignore or treat as rubbish lead us towards a fundamental political and moral question of our times. Only a small number of these objects have been selected for inclusion in the exhibition 'In the garden of the (In)visible'. The travelling exhibition attempts to  stage encounters between individuals crossing borders and individuals living at borders. Ultimately, it seeks to ask a fundamental question: what do we (not) want to see?

CREDITS

Coordination

Roberta Altin

Katja Hrobat Virloget

Concept & scientific team

Roberta Altin

Katja Hrobat Virloget

Alessandro Monsutti

Giuseppe Grimaldi

Gathering and collection of exhibits

Students of the Border Archive (cultural anthropology course, Dep. Humanities University of Trieste)

Students of Humanities Faculty, University of Primorska: Monika Cergolj, Kristina Kovačić, Michał Saczuk

Friends and volunteers

Creative Project and exhibition

Federico Barile AltreMenti

Rino Lombardi

Photographs: Angela Tozzi Ins, Katja Hrobat Virloget

Communication:

Communication and External Relations Unit of the University of Trieste

University of Primorska

Sponsor:

T4E Transform4EuropeAlliance

University of Primorska, UP Faculty of Humanities

Department of Humanities - University of Trieste

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

ARIS (Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency) projects: J6-50198 Ethnography of Silence(s), J6-2578 Urban Futures: Imagining and Activating Possibilities in Unsettled Times