Swim to survive

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This is the story of Yusra Mardini, a syrian swimmer, who in August 2015 saved 19 syrians from drowning aboard a fragile boat on the Aegean Sea. She embodies the metaphor of the body as a vessel of identities, similar to aquatic species that migrate. A body swimming to survive. A body as a terrain, understood through a biographical cartography that opens reflective spaces about the condition of marine transit dictated by exile, and the inevitable adaptation or refusal of the asylum system in developed countries. 

 

The piece recounts the life of the Syrian swimmer, her odyssey across the Mediterranean, and her reasons for metamorphosing into a fish. The backdrop is her former home; it shows how, after escaping the war, she returns to Damascus, possibly driven by nostalgia, to reclaim a fragment of her past or simply to reminisce about the days with her family before the calamity. Thus, the narrative illustrates how the protagonist transitions from one room to another, traversing various emotional states, sharing her story and her means of survival. Over five years, has generated the following processes: