SAFE JOURNEY
2003
SAFE JOURNEY
Following the shocking occurrences reported by the international news in the past few years, there entered into our houses a "new" word that served to inevitably modify the habits and the behaviors of millions of people. Having become accustomed to living with a new and worrisome realty, made up of false alarms, presumptions of imminent terrorist attacks, and continuous threats of a dangerous epidemic, the term "safety" has gained an astonishing popularity and today has become integrated into the life and the conscience of each and every citizen on this planet.
Taking from this new daily reality, always distorted in its truthfulness by the strong pressures of the media, I wanted to personally examine one of the "real" plagues in our society in "terms of safety” - the problem of fatalities on the highway. When I initiated my research, I had the double intention to both inform and to dis-inform the audience at the same time, taking advantage of true facts which riddled the pages of the newspapers around the world. Pulling the information from various official government sources, statistics, and data, I attempted to recreate a general landscape of the automobile incidents, which occurred on the streets of the United States of America during the years 2001-2002. After I selected the information, I took pleasure in manipulating, distorting, and "exaggerating" the data collected during my investigation, with the intention to modify the significance and the actual meaning of the events. By creating contradictions in the installation of drawings, statistics, and testimonies, I wanted to reconstruct in the gallery the climate of confusion and disorientation that rules in today's contemporary society, where it has become nearly impossible for the individual to distinguish the reality from the deceptions.