Death-jackets, 2024

1 meter x 60 cm

Hand embroidery in cotton on life jackets in collaboration with Jonas Jönsson

This installation features two counterfeit life jackets, one for a child and one for an infant, embroidered by hand with red thread and installed against a solid blue wall, referencing the visual language of European bureaucratic systems. These jackets, commonly sold to refugees during sea crossings, are non-functional and represent the exploitation of vulnerable lives for profit.

I use embroidery as a method of marking the objects with personal and collective memory, labor, and grief. The red thread, connecting the two vests, evokes fragile bonds: between parent and child, between strangers in transit, and between trauma and survival.

Deathjackets is part of my ongoing exploration of border politics, migration, and material evidence. By recontextualizing these deceptive objects, the work critiques the violence embedded in smuggling economies and the bureaucracies that enable them.

Images from the solo exhibition Violence of Documents at Hammarkullen Konsthall, Göteborg, 2024.