Longing Island

Longing Island imagines a future shaped by migration, displacement, and the silent echoes of lost homelands. Set against the backdrop of climate catastrophe and industrial exploitation, the project explores how objects, particularly dolls, carry the memories, hopes, and identities of those uprooted from their land.

In Bangladesh, millions of women like Tanya migrate from rural villages to the city, drawn into the garment industry by necessity. As traditional landscapes vanish under rising seas and economic forces, the cultural objects they leave behind, humble handmade dolls, become portraits of forgotten lives.

These dolls, infused with soil, memory, and longing, follow the currents of the Ganges River. They carry not only the identity of their makers but also the debris, toxicity, and layered histories of a fractured land. Over time, these drifting relics accumulate at the river’s mouth, forming a migrating island: a slow, shapeshifting mass without borders, without owners, and without value in the modern economy.

Fed by sediment and swept by tides, Longing Island emerges and dissolves with the rhythm of the delta. Its existence is fragile yet persistent, visible only at certain hours when flocks of birds settle upon its surface, briefly outlining its form against the horizon. It is a symbolic homeland for the displaced, a silent archive of forgotten territories, invisible histories, and broken cycles of return.

Tanya has never set foot on the island. But she knows it is there, a floating memory of the home she and millions of others have lost.