Undélaissé
To reminisce the future by sharing bread and stories
Amina Menia is passionate about the margins of a city, its left over, its unexpressed.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014, she revisits an empty lot that discloses a poignant episode in the memory of Folkestone. During the first World War, a bomb fell on this site, killing and injuring people queuing for food. There is no physical evidence of the tragedy, only emptiness for remembrance. Only a plaque retelling the story. She was moved by the sobriety of this commemoration, and chose to base her proposal on a discreet site-specific intervention with the desire to keep this spirit of “fertile emptiness” that moved her in this site.
There are different narratives around this event that are cohabiting in the town. The widespread idea is that this shop was a bakery. The artist wanted to overlap with this urban myth by weaving some people’s personal narratives with fragments of politics, geography, and bread recipes.
Here, the bread is a metaphor for separation and gathering. There is nothing more shareable than bread, recalling the childhood and its poetic flavours. She met people from the Migrant Support Group, exploring the mosaïc composition of Tontine Street as well as Folkestone’s recent history. The transmission of recipes was a trans-communal storytelling uniting the Folkestonians in the difference of their routes and their stories of life. It was like opening a family album, unfolding symbols and memories. The sound piece inhabiting the space reflects those moments of generosity.
In this centenary year of the World War 1, the artist meant to celebrate the future in an intervention resonating with Folkestone’s past and present.
The title is a composition of a french and english word. The « délaissé » means derelict or deserted, whereas Un is for undoing this situation.
The artwork aims to create a sharing circle to think about a common future where this empty place is not deserted anymore…