Vanishing Landscape

From colonialism to capitalism, from white supremacy to heteropatriarchy , antagonism endangers the right of the vulnerable and exacerbates inequality in cities. Islands become convenient spaces for authorities to hide the unwanted. Hart Island, New York’s largest mass burial ground for marginalised groups, is one of these forbidden places. The impact of global emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change have brought the unresolved and continuing violation of marginalised communities into the spotlight.

Adopting principles of military tactics, the project proposes a framework for stealth activism, which superficially cooperates with the government, while intrinsically acting as a parallel memorial system that claims the right of the deceased.

Based on a non-linear timeline, Vanishing Landscape unfolds the potential of the cemetery island through vanishing processes to reveal the fluidity of life and death. From visibility to invisibility, from solid to particles, from antithesis to integration, the institutionalised truth is replaced with a perpetual dialogue in movement.

Within the contrived vanishing process, the work speaks up against the multifaceted violence of marginalisation, offering an invitation for a shared resistance against the binary system that rooted in the antagonism.