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You Belong Elsewhere


You Belong Elsewhere, exhibition view, St.Gallen, 2024

You Belong Elsewhere, exhibition view. St.Gallen, 2024




You Belong Elsewhere

Details & MaterialAbout

2024
2,093g of captured Sahara dust and sand (130 probes)
910cm x 484cm


You Belong Elsewhere comprises 130 distinct probes containing captured airborne Sahara dust and sand, sourced from partners around the globe, creating a total mixed sample of 2093g without direct extraction from the desert itself.

In February 2023, vast clouds of Sahara dust turned Europe’s skies orange, making the air suddenly visible. Similar moments, like Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout in 1986 or the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, have temporarily heightened our understanding of global interconnectedness, refining our perception of distances, and expanding worldly comprehension.

Melting down borders through an almost neurotic search for origin and belonging, You Belong Elsewhere brings origin to a stateless medium. The processes involving the movement of substances or climatic changes occur on scales and within timeframes that often defy human comprehension, pushing against the mental limits through which humans can relate their actions to these scales. An artificial desert floor is created, as if a sandstorm has swept through the space, instigating both a tangible and conceptual transformation of the ground soil.