Further images / Return to 2015
Description: The Australian Border Deaths Database states that it "maintains a record of all of the known border deaths associated with Australia's since 1 January 2000". From this time until November 2015 there were 1,974+ border deaths. Details of individual names, ages, country of birth, circumstance and date of death are recorded. From this extensive list, the Action Researcher/Performer selected five people who had arrived in Australia from different countries and who had died within the past two years. These were: Mohammad Nasin Najafi (27 y/o), Omid Ali Avaz (29 y/o), Leo Seemanpillai (29 y/o), Rezene Mebrahta Engeda (30 y/o) and an anonymous Indian man (27 y/o). The AR/P drew an outline of five different pares of her own shoes and then cut out the footprints from cardboard and painted them red. She then drew the shape of the five countries, identifying where these people had arrived from (Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea, India and Sri Lanka) and cut these out of card painted white. On the back of the pairs of red footprints the AR/P wrote the name and summary details about the individual. She then took the red footprints into the local suburbs and left them in pairs in different places on the footpath. At this moment in time, the number of displaced people in the World has reached the same figure as that during World War II.