Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow: Traceability is Credibility

 The Irish artist Bryan Mc Cormack retells the odyssey of refugees in an installation promoted by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini

12 May – 13 August 2017

 On 13 May 2017, an installation by Irish artist Bryan Mc Cormack will be unveiled on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Entitled Yesterday/Today/ Tomorrow: Traceability is Credibility, the work has been promoted by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and is one of the collateral events at the Biennale di Venezia – 57th International Art Exhibition.

 Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow is the result of conceptual work on the current migrant phenomenon by Bryan Mc Cormack. The core of the installation is the visualisation of the European refugee crisis and the beginning of a research project to collect, preserve and interpret the visual data, aimed at giving the refugees their own, independent voice. The artist has spent over one year in dozens of camps across Europe where he worked with hundreds of refugees from a multitude of nationalities to asked them to draw three sketches on three sheets of paper with coloured pens. They were asked to sketch their past life (Yesterday), their present life (Today), and to imagine their future (Tomorrow). The drawings have been gathered together and will be used as “visual blocks” for the centrepiece of the installation.

Then, on 23 May 2017, a performance to be staged on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, will be curated by Bryan Mc Cormack and Dr. Henry Bell from the Sheffield Hallam University. In the style of Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre, Dr. Bell’s students will be invited to focus actively on the experience and aspiration of the refugees as expressed in their drawings. Lastly, on Saturday 17 June 2017, as part of the Venice Art Night, Bryan Mc Cormack will give a talk at the Fondazione Cini on the Island of San Giorgio.

The overall project gives refugees their own, independent voice also on the Social Media: three drawings will be posted every day on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In this way, with no barriers of language or education, the artist wishes to sensitize the world to the crisis.

Bryan Mc Cormack was born in Dublin in 1972, and now lives and works in Paris. He has mainly created works dealing with specifically social and political subject matters. He has had over thirty solo or group shows in venues such as the Centre Pompidou and UNESCO, Paris, the Empire Gallery, London, and the Museo Chopin, Valldemossa. One of his monumental public works is permanently installed in the park of Saint-Cloud, Paris.