Fernando Niño-Sánchez

“Dusk and Not Dawn, is an installation proposal that specifically addresses the issue of peasant expulsion and exodus. “At dawn they left with their three children and some clothes in a sack …”, is one of the many stories that continue to this day. The agricultural produce of farmers is packed in plastic sacks – the same sacks in which they carry away their unique memories.

In the piece Dusk and Not Dawn I reconstruct a row of persons forced into displacement. Plastic sacks of different sizes are suspended from the ceiling at different heights; each sack discloses the shape of what is inside as well as the outline of the person carrying it on the outside. A now defunct person. As the subject carrying the sack is absent, I can involve the viewer as possible actor carrying the sack. The sacks are also used to transport the bodies of the disappeared, some of which have refused to abandon their land or have taken up arms against the militants. The dead and displaced population generate an absence and each absence calls for responsibility to be taken for the missing.”

Fernando Niño-Sánchez was born in El Socorro, Santander, Colombia. He lives and works in Berlin.