21st May is World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, and never before have we been so aware that we inhabit the same planet, which is fragile and threatened by ecological, economic and political crises, wars and conflicts that force more and more people to move across borders and barriers in search of a sustainable life. 

The exhibition-installation The Garden of the (In)visible, which will be inaugurated in the Right Wing of the ground floor of UniTS Building A on Monday 27th May, aims to stimulate a reflection on borders and migrants starting from the objects abandoned at the border. 

The exhibition brings together everyday objects and clothes left behind at the borders between Croatia, Slovenia and Italy during the ‘Balkan route’. These objects, collected with students from UniTS Department of Humanities (DISU) and the University of Primorska, have been organised into a travelling anthropological installation. 

These objects, which we ignore or treat as rubbish, project us into a fundamental political and moral issue of our times.

This is the thought of anthropologist Marc Augè: ‘Our ideal should not be that of a world without borders, but of a world in which borders are recognised, respected and crossed, that is, a world in which respect for differences begins with respect for individuals, regardless of their origin. A border is not a wall that prohibits passage, but a threshold that invites passage’.

The exhibition-installation is part of the cultural events of the T4EU (Transform for Europe) alliance for UNITS, funded by DISU (Department of Humanities) in cooperation with University of Primorska in Koper and the Graduate institute for International and Development Studies.