The only thing most people know about epiphytes, if they know about them at all, is that they're rootless. That's not quite true - they develop highly specialized root systems adapted to wherever they land. In Epiphytic Elucidations at Patel Brown Gallery, Calgary-based artist Marigold Santos takes this fact as more than a metaphor. The exhibition uses epiphytes - plants that grow on other plants without harming them - as a framework for the expansive ways diasporas form through material labor.
From Senegal to Somalia and Egypt to South Africa, credit alert notifications from fintech apps such as Western Union or WorldRemit often set the mood for the rest of the day, week or even month. Transfers from workers within the continent and the diaspora to their relatives are often referred to as the black tax, whereby one person's salary and relative success can become the safety net for a whole extended family.
Both came to the UK separately: Maya, a graduate student from near the capital, Tehran, six years ago and Daniel, a support worker from Sine in northwestern Iran, three years back. Both have family still in Iran. Maya has yet to hear from her elderly parents on the outskirts of Karasht near Tehran. How Daniel's father, who is sick with cancer, is coping remains unknown.
There is a point during Tamara Stepanyan's My Armenian Phantoms when the documentary cuts to the final scene of the 1980 Soviet film, A Piece of Sky, in which the orphaned lead character, joyfully rides a horse and cart through the town that had long shunned him and the sex worker he married as social outcasts. A flock of birds are then framed gliding through the pristine blue sky above.
When I was leaving London for Melbourne, my eldest sister-in-law told her kids not to forget the tradition to throw a bowl of water behind me as I stepped out the door. Just a small splash on the ground, a gesture older than borders. La har azaab po aman se, she whispered in Pashto under her breath may all hardship stay away from you. The little ones giggled and waved their goodbyes as they spilled the water, somewhere between shy and amused.
About two-thirds of Romania's diaspora are economic migrants, contributing significantly to the economy through remittances, and many feel politically neglected and invisible.
