Presented in the heart of Saint-Paul, Paris, this installation confronts one of the most urgent and often silenced issues of our time: the erasure of memory and the fragility of identity in the context of migration. In 2012, an entire migrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris was demolished in a matter of days — a brutal act of urban transformation that left a deep wound in the social fabric of communities who, for over forty years, had lived as French citizens within the city’s territory.

The work is built from the authentic fragments of a building’s façade, salvaged just before their disappearance. Reassembled in front of the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral, this reconstructed wall becomes a monument to absence — a silent yet powerful reminder that the past cannot simply be discarded without reckoning with its human consequences.

By transplanting the remnants of a forgotten periphery into the symbolic center of Paris, the installation demands a collective reflection on identity, belonging, and continuity. It challenges us to confront the uncomfortable truth that the future cannot be built on ruins we choose not to see, and that the stories of migration — deeply woven into Europe’s present — must be faced with responsibility, memory, and care.