Xenitia is an archive, centered on displacement to Greece. It is framed by two motifs: “nostos” (Classical Greek; to return home, homecoming) and “algos” (Classical Greek; pain, grief). Together, these affect-laden words form the root of “nostalgia”. “Xenitia” itself is a Greek term that encompasses the state of being a foreigner, otherness, estrangement, loss, distance, and a profound yearning for home soil.
The collection, which was made in 2016, produces a complex mosaic of movement and feeling within Greece. In 1923, a treaty was drawn up between the governments of Greece and Turkey which forcibly displaced millions of people from their homes. Recent economic hardship in Greece has produced a fresh wave of emigration. At the same time, hundreds of people fleeing war and persecution at home arrive on Greek shores every day. Xenitia elicits comparison between the local and the universal, conjuring similarities amongst diverse experiences.
A percentage of profits are being donated to Habibi.Works a free-to-use, community-organised maker space bringing together asylum-seekers, international makers, and Greek locals to share knowledge, skills, and experiences.
I am an intruder to literature...
An intruder to language, love, color, perfume and music...
An intruder to the whole of life...
I am returning from the depth of an absence to a blueness which I almost don't believe.
A wave of nostalgia transports me to another one...
A gull guides me to some of my memories, then leaves...
Disappears...
A wave of despair throws me to a distant port...
I rub the salt from my two eyes trying to believethat I am here sighing alone on the rock of exile...
I sculpt some of my irony...
I curse the ground for a while, then I leave...
I open my heart to my fake dreams...
I try, like an idiot, to catch some air...
I look like a thief to strangers while I try retrieving some of my looted lifetime...
I look like a criminal to them, as I shout out in the face of wind:
I want to be!
Zakariia Sabbagh
Thessaloniki, 2016
My migrant birds, scattered across the world,
Your beautiful youth has gotten old in foreign lands.
Damn you, foreign land, you and all your villages;
Without wife and children, without parents by one's side.
Traditional polyphonic song of Epirus
Xenitia: Etienne Audrey Bruce
Text design: Daniel Garcia
Essay: Sophie Sheera
Text part 1: Zakariia Sabbagh, Ahmed Rashid Yoonso, Mohammed Abu Marasa,
Amer Alhaj & selected interviews
Text part 2: traditional polyphonic songs of Epirus & selected interviews
160 pages
240 x 230 mm
Softcover with printed image, foiled text and gatefold
