This performance originates from a personal act of collecting soil and sand from places around the world, mostly from places reached through the journeys of friends. Each handful of earth represents a location, a movement, a crossing.

Initially, this act emerged as a form of “traveling backwards”: a way to trace my movements through fragments of land rather than through stamps or borders. It was also a response to frustration and anger—reflecting the limitations and inequalities attached to traveling with the passport I was born with. Mobility, often taken for granted, became something distant, negotiated, and fragile. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, these restrictions intensified. Movement became nearly impossible. Borders closed. Yet paradoxically, the world entered a shared condition of immobility. In this moment, separation and connection existed side by side. We were all grounded—held in place by uncertainty, fear, and collective pause.

In this performance, I mix all the collected soil and sand together, dissolving their geographical origins into a single body of earth. I then sift the mixture through a loosely woven textile that I have created. The textile functions as both filter and membrane: it recalls borders, bureaucratic systems, and invisible thresholds, while also echoing my ongoing practice of weaving as a gesture of connection, patience, and resistance.

Through the act of sieving, the soil passes through layers of tension and openness. What remains is shaped by gravity, time, and touch. From this process, one unified pile of earth is formed and carefully packaged into a limited, crafted clay container. This final object becomes a condensed archive of movement, restriction, longing, and shared vulnerability. It holds traces of many places, many journeys, and many hands, yet belongs fully to none.

It questions ideas of ownership, nationality, and access, while honoring the quiet persistence of movement—both visible and imagined.

Ultimately, this performance reflects on mobility and immobility, privilege and limitation, separation and common ground. It is an offering of soil as memory, as witness, and as reminder: that beneath borders and documents, we all stand on the same fragile earth.