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Migratory Tides
Intervention in the Africa/Canaries frontier-space

When Gaston Bachelard wrote The Poetics of Space, he proposed the images should be understood “as sudden events in life”, the reason being that “when the image is new the world is new”. Today, more than ever, our political and moral consciences demand that we take up the new image.

Migratory Tides emerged from the need to contribute a new perspective on the phenomenon of clandestine immigration, in this instance, from the shores of Africa to the Canary Islands. The idea is to examine the power and influence of “the image” in the migratory movement. Migratory Tides “speak without words” and borrows the rhythm of the tides to lend visibility to and decipher the imagery of young Africans.

Óscar Rodriguez has devised the new image in the form of huge drawings on the sands of beaches, those strips of land on which the emigrants tread on for the last time before embarking on their journey to the Europe of their dreams, and for the first time when they reach our shores, those who survive the journey.

The drawings are made under a full moon, when the ebb tides are longer, since the space on which they are born is on loan from the sea. Migratory movements, like the tides, are incessant. This action takes place in the frontier-space between Africa and the Canary Islands. On the shores of each, “elojodearena” threw down the same challenge to Senegalese children and youths: “Draw what you think Europe is”. We can see the new image precisely because the rhythm of the tide allows it. And while the imaginings of Europe take shape, the waves of the sea show us that the destruction of the dominant world image is our grasp.

Gloria Godínez