Displaying the Clothing of Refugees and Migrants: Performing Tragedy and Justice

This article investigates the display of empty clothing in artworks made about forced migration to Europe. It focuses on Arabella Dorman’s Suspended and Ai Weiwei’s Safe Passage, both of which use abandoned clothing gathered from the beaches of Lesbos, Greece. The third example, Borderline, is a theatre production by PSYCHEdelight which uses clothes as a key scenographic and dramaturgical element of performance to give insight into the lives of refugees in the Jungle in Calais, a refugee encampment on another European shore. Drawing on historical and contemporary uses of empty clothing by artists and activists in other times and locations, and from scholarship in visual culture, the article reflects on the use of the empty clothing of contemporary refugees and migrants as material for art. This reveals the ways in which the erstwhile wearers of the clothing, and their intentions in abandoning it, remain largely obscure in the visual art works. Lack of knowledge about the wearers of the clothing limits the potential impact of these artworks’meaning that readings of tragedy dominate their reception. Live performance offers some advantages by giving an insight into the wearers of the clothing, and into some of the complexities of encountering Europe’s shores as a refugee. Rather than a signal to mourn, the use of the empty clothing of refugees in performance plays a small but vital part in better understanding the ongoing human struggle to find safety.