Trauma On Plate, 2022
30 × 24.5 cm
Porcelain, hand-painted brass cutlery and iron cast grenade

Trauma On Plate reflects on how refugee trauma is presented, consumed and aestheticised. The work was made in response to the media attention I received after arriving in Sweden, where my experience of war, survival and displacement often felt reduced to a story that could be quickly consumed.

The porcelain plate and cutlery refer to domestic life, Swedish design and the rituals of eating. At the centre of this setting is an iron-cast grenade, interrupting the image of care and hospitality with the weight of violence. By placing trauma on the plate, the work confronts the way pain can be served to others as spectacle, while remaining heavy and unresolved for the person who carries it.

From Liljevalchs Spring Salon 2024