Divine protection

Where the salt does not cleanse

Twelve black sheets torn from a spiral notebook. One for each year between 2014 and 2025. On each, three inscriptions that do not speak to one another. They simply overlap.

At the top, handwritten in ballpoint, the name of a saint from the Western Christian calendar. At the center, a character from the Ge’ez alphabet, the liturgical language of Ethiopia and Eritrea that ceased to be spoken centuries ago though its script endures, traced in glossy black acrylic over the matte black of the cardstock. Visible only when the viewer tilts their body toward the light. At the bottom, stamped with an office seal and cuttlefish ink, a number. The minors recorded as dead or missing in the Mediterranean that year.

A language that disappeared and left its writing behind. Children who disappeared and left a figure behind. A sea that returns the data but not the body.

The saints do not appear as cultural contrast. These are the very saints the West prays to and implores, the same ones who left those children unprotected. Invocation and abandonment share the same name here. The title does not lie. There was divine protection, just not for everyone.

The series is built not to be seen. Black on black forces the viewer to move, to search for the angle. Whoever looks straight on sees nothing. It is the exact shape of indifference, and also its condition. You have to shift your position for the wound to become legible.

The final gesture is the tear. Each sheet pulled from the notebook with the same motion used to discard a calendar page at the end of the day. In a calendar, tearing means time moves on. Here it means lives are discarded and the next year begins clean.

There are no bodies in this series. No faces, no biographies, no reconstruction. Only the writing of those who have no voice, the name of those who should have protected, and the count of what could not be counted.

Details

Series of twelve sheets. Black notebook paper, 29.3 × 29.3 cm each.

Ballpoint pen, acrylic and Sepia officinalis ink, 2026.