Faceless Decision Maker and ‘I will tell you this…’
Austere ‘office’ set up, a suit which symbolised ‘Faceless Decision Maker’ and the pocket squares with only partially visible text, highlight the ideas of a bureaucratic, emotionless procedural system designed to reveal at each stage only a part of the journey, and to absolve anyone serving that system of the guilt of prejudice, lack of compassion and most of all, responsibility for the decisions that affect the lives of others.
Yet again, my works are invocative of the barriers, the fragmentary nature of the processes to which we are often exposed, the difficulty that it creates in seeing the human and feeling human. This is heightened by the idea of chance. ‘I will tell you…’ plays on a memory of seemingly innocent paper fortune teller, a game that I played as a child. I still remember the trepidation of uncertainty about what ‘decision’ it would make for me.
This piece was initially created to be used as an interactive tool in bringing the plight of migrants to the wider audience, but in the process it highlighted the fact that the bureaucratic decision-making processes affect all of us. The concepts of acceptance and rejection are not unique to migration.
Together, these pieces create a narrative of unease, of detachment on one hand and of challenge, frustration and at times despair on the other.
