The Project

Western Sahara is the last colony in Africa.

We worked in those refugee camps between 2012 and 2013 with some European organizations that guarantee the provision of humanitarian aid and assistance in agreement with the Saharawi Government in exile.

In the middle of the desert, one day they told us a story. After the cease-fire, at the beginning of the 90s, the Saharawi Government was convinced that the referendum was going to be organized and that everyone was soon to be back home, in Western Sahara. It asked to each family to build a wood chest. Everything they could fit into the chest would have been brought back, in the return journey. After more than 20 years, wood chests are still there, outside and inside the houses. Waiting.

What if suddenly the Saharawi people could go back home, tomorrow, without not even the time to prepare that chest? What would they bring with them? The ‘objects of memory’ become the excuse to tell the daily life in refugee camps, where children grow up, study, get married and give birth to children, in the middle of a desert and with very few prospects for the future.

We went house by house to explain our project. We got many refusals, but it worked. Many helped us and understood our aim: to tell a forgotten conflict, to do it in a positive way. To compose a story through images and to transform it into an itinerant exhibition, in physical and online public spaces, to speak about a conflict that medias have stopped to cover.

Portraits of Memory is a project to not to forget a forgotten conflict.

If you want to know more about the project, click here!

This project has been possible thanks to the help of many people: Laura Bartolini, Susanna Stigler, Lorenzo Banchini, Sara Lozzi, Caterina Francesca Guidi,

Thanks also to our translators: Laura Bartolini, Caterina Francesca Guidi, Sara Boccacci (English,), Marta Fraticelli (French), Artur Millan Torruella (Spanish), Albert F. Arcarons (Catalan), Giorgio Fruscione (Serbo-Croat)