What the rope told me about displacements
video installation
2026 Bremen, Germany
Its capacity to hold onto something is so strong that it can withstand the heaviest cargo ships in the port. “It is faithful to what it protects, to what it holds”, the plants told me as they began to grow on the rope after I brought it to Bremen. One day, I sat to reflect with it. Its long and heavy body rested like an animal curled upon itself, ready to tell me the most sacred stories about the movements of water, and in a way, about humans too.
The rope and I spoke in silence, exchanging stories about our journeys. We discovered that both of us had travelled thousands of kilometres to arrive in northern Germany and meet at this particular moment, face to face. As I spent time with it, carrying it, dragging it, feeling its weight to rest on my body, I slowly began to understand it.
The rope told me about salt water drying on its skin, about storms, long journeys, and years of holding vessels much larger than itself. It told me about endurance, about friction, and about the marks left behind by what we carry. It told me that knots do not appear without tension, and that weight accumulates quietly over time.
Most importantly, it taught me something about life: neither ropes nor people are meant to carry everything alone. Strength is not measured by how much weight we can bear alone, because there is a point when everybody, whether human or rope, reaches its limit. Some weights can only be sustained when they are shared. And perhaps that is why we meet others along the way, not to remove the burden, but to help carry it.
The video shows a solitary process of carrying, dragging, holding, knotting, and feeling the rope, changing to lighter movements of letting go, surrendering, and dancing. Through these actions, the work searches for a way of coexistence with this emotional weight and displacement while opening the question of how our bodies carry and negotiate such identity burdens.
Alongside the video, the rope displays its material presence, scale, physical weight and a text in which I tell what the rope taught me.