‘As an immigrant, I don’t really have roots, I have tendrils, which stretch to different places in the world where there are people I love’
Argentinian project artist, Cyprus, 2022

The SIM Project install a mobile exhibition in the Paintworks Event Space, for BOP festival 23, presenting over 100 personal glass and metal artefacts made by participants from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Senegal and Libya.

The SIM Project gives tangible meaning to people’s virtual networks and explores how the images we create and exchange through our smartphones map our place in the world. The unique wearable artefacts in the project collection have been made in workshops across Europe using a process which combines analogue and digital photography with jewellery making.

The project is led by artist and anthropologist Liz Hingley with the support of jeweller Sofie Boons and Frank Menger of the Centre for Print Research. It is inspired by and continues to evolve through conversation and craft with refugees and others who have experienced displacement to shape new ways of sharing, valuing and archiving stories of migration. This chapter of the project is produced with Counterpoints Arts and supported by the University of West England and Martin Parr Foundation.

Part of the Platforma festival 2023, produced by Counterpoints Arts and partners across the South West of England.