Exhibition by artist and anthropologist Liz Hingley with Frank Menger and Egemen Kizilcan
‘People migrate from one place to another, and as they move, their bonds of love with the place they come from continue like spider webs.’
Mahide Uz, poet and SIM Project member
The SIM Project combines the histories of photography and jewellery to give material meaning to people’s virtual networks and create new ways to value migration stories. It focuses on the SIM, as an international ID card and a key tool for intimate connection that unlocks ‘smartphone “suitcases,” to provide a portable sense of belonging.
In workshops, residents of Portland will come together to create SIM-scale glass prints from personal screenshots using a bespoke camera, and then frame them in metal. Each person makes one to keep and another to add to the installation, designed for the festival with forms that respond the geology of the island.
The mobile exhibition features hundreds of unique prints made and worn by participants with experience of displacement from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Colombia, at free workshops held in seven countries.
The SIM Project is led by artist and anthropologist Liz Hingley in collaboration Frank Menger of the Centre for Print Research at the University of West England (UWE), architect Egemen Kizilcan and a growing team. The project is sponsored by 4JET.
