Review on Gideon Mendel's exhibition "Dzhangal", a recollection of abandoned objects from the so-called Jungle.
When you inhumanely kick out 9'000 refugees from their sanctuary, this is what's left.
After the disgraceful wipe out of the iconic Jungle of Calais in France, South-African artist Gideon Mendel picked up pieces of the puzzle to paint us a better picture of this ephemeral town. A collection of everyday items, from toothbrushes to a ukulele, were meticulously displayed in Shoreditch's Autograph gallery, London.
As I stepped into a room packed with wrecked stuff, I felt an ambiguous mishmash of sorrow, anger and astonishment. Never have objects spoken to me so much, and this time they all had a story to tell. I was hooked. While some had clearly been damaged by the violence underwent by the refugees- torn, burnt, broken or all 3 at once- others were a simple reflection of the banality of life in the Jungle. Check it out...
"It was big trouble when I came here. I can't believe this is Europe. Is it true that this place exists in Europe? Where is humanity, where is democracy?" - Voices from the Jungle
"I think, because we have come here, we are not human beings; we become animals, a new kind of animal. A new kind of animal that has developed at this time. It's known as "refugee". I was in this wonderful world, in the Jungle, for three months. Really, it is wonderful. Because of the people inside, they are wonderful. You can see many nations saying "Hi, hello", in different languages. You can see that they respect you". - Voices from the Jungle
"The aim was to go to Egypt, nothing more, nothing less. I didn't plan on coming to Europe- it wasn't a dream or anything. I just wanted to be safe, even if that was Egypt."- Voices from the Jungle
"I look at all my clothes. I get all of them from the lines. Especially this jacket- when I achieved this, after more than one hour standing in the queue, I felt like a hunter come back home with a big hunt. I think : Which English person was wearing this jacket before me? And was he more happy or the same as me?" - Babak Inaloo, artist "Mani"
While Mendel was taking his first pictures in the camp, he was confronted by a refugee who said to him "You fucking photographers. You come here and you take our photographs and you tell us that it’s going to help us, but nothing changes. The only person that it helps is you." Consequently, the artist became quite "revolted with the idea of photographing in the camp. I didn’t want to lift a camera any more.”
Surprisingly, the result is arguably more startling than the vast majority of other refugee-related pictures encountered in mainstream media-which become undermined due to repeated exposure. Through this intimate point of view, the spectator contemplates the glorified mess with compassionate eyes as he imagines the experiences of the Jungle's inhabitants. A brief and superficial portrait, yet one that sticks in the mind far longer than any headline title ever could.
Get Mendel's book of Dzhangal HERE or check out more of his amazing work on his artist page.