Invasion of the ants

In this three-screen installation, ants speak to the current refugee crisis, particularly as it manifests through Australia’s Fortress Island border protection policy. Mixing found footage with our own film work, we create a phantom space where ants and refugees collide and divide. The horror of being feared and made homeless is captured through the way we centralise the absence-presence of the child – a stinging metaphor for the children that have been left behind to rot on Nauru and Manus Island. We use the central image of the child’s dinghy floating away on the water to capture the usual innocence of the activity. In our work, of course, it speaks to boat-people arrivals, and the flimsy way refugees try to make it to Australia.