Entangled - footprints of Europe

‘Entangled’ combines multi-layered narratives to explore the complex patchwork of enclaved territories across Europe. Representing footprints from history, they reveal the fluidity of borders. (formerly working project - 'unbound')

I began this project in the aftermath of ‘Brexit’ - my own country’s decision for greater political separation from its neighbours - searching, perhaps, for evidence that entanglement between nations need not be a problem to be solved.

Scattered across Europe are eight clusters of territories that the neat logic of the nation-state never resolved: enclaves - small pieces of one country swallowed whole by another. But these aren’t cartographic errors. They are curious remnants of history - footprints and traces from treaties and inheritances that have remained.

In every enclave I encountered a pragmatic genius for coexistence. Through generations of necessity, they have developed an instinctive fluency in working through ambiguity.

What I found was something quietly radical: people who have simply decided to ‘get on with it’.

We live in an era of building walls. These enclaves suggest a different possibility, and maybe represent its antithesis?