Closer

With borders shutting down to stem the stream of Syrian refugees, Marin Jansen wondered just how inaccessible the country is becoming. She found people willing to try and reach Syria and bring back sand for her to use in a series of ceramics. In this way, she explores which routes are still open and which are closed. The resulting ceramics visualise this quest, with each disc indicating how far from the Syrian border the sand was sourced. Not only does every sample have a different colour and structure, each has its own story. And so the physical sand map also becomes a metaphor for the intricate social network that grew to make the project possible.