Saba—Eritrea to London on foot, by car, lorry, boat and aeroplane, 2013, printed 2021

Aida Silvestri’s poetic approach to documentary photography allows her to explore diaspora, culture, mental health, and politics in her work. In this series, she embroiders portraits of Eritrean refugees with colored thread that maps the perilous journeys they took toward safety and personal freedom. The black-and-white images recall passport photographs, yet Silvestri uses blurred focus to maintain her subjects’ anonymity and enlarges the prints to elevate the refugees’ newfound exile identities.