Vanishing ink, 2008

The piece Vanishing Ink talks about the loss of the past that inevitably occurs during the process of inmigration. During the piece the artist writes a letter to her grandmother Maria, as she were her grandfather,*she writes the letter she thinks he would have written if he would have written one) who abandon the Canary Islands in 1947 in a small boat toward the Caribbean and never wrote to his family again. The text of this letter is inspired by the testimonials of the senegalese inmigrants that today arrive by thousands to the islands also in small boats called pateras. The letter is written in invisble ink that it reveals itself through a process of heating' simbolizing the effort needed to get to know inmigrants past. The letter reads Dear Maria: Sorry I have not written you before, but the trip was so horrible..many of us died in the boat and we threw tem out for fear of infections, it took us three months, much longer that we have thought so we run out of food and water very early. On arrival we were very sick and others died in the hospital. When I was well enough to leave I had spent all our savings. Now I have a job, that barely covers my needs. I will not be able to send you and the children money, although I know how much you must need it. That is why I could never send you this letter. Julian Performance for the International Festival of Performance about Migration in Bern, 2008