“A Land of Light – With endless horizons – And sites you won’t forget.”
This slogan from a travel agency slowly moves across the screen. The font is reminiscent of the typography used in advertising and propaganda films of the 1950s. The neon green colour of it promises artificial fantasy worlds that exist only in the minds of those who long for them. In a close-up, the camera subtly circles an animated date palm. A seductive illusion that makes you forget everything else. The video screen is embedded in an installation of dusty carpets, a golden plastic decor and delicate wallpaper depicting a landscape in which hardly anything natural can be recognised.
In her work, Donia Jornod examines how images travel ahead of bodies and spread ideologies that circulate via screens, advertising and digital platforms. The visual language of the tourism industry thus creates fictional places and othering, a necessary condition for the colonial project. It nourished the utopia of the Elsewhere. The artist researched the imagery of colonised Algeria, which gained its independence in 1962 after 132 years. She came across numerous examples of this visual language, in which tourism served as a political instrument. Conquered territories were advertised with ‘exotic’ images that suggested an artificial paradise while concealing the violence and brutality of the colonial reality.
Perhaps the artist proposes to resist the seduction and ask ourselves: What did the real palm trees actually witness? And what was the cost of our longing at the time and what is it today?
Text by Luca Rey
