entangled – footprints of europe
(‘unbound’ as working title)

Look closely enough at a map of Europe and the clean border lines begin to unravel.

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?