Trafficked

Trafficked follows Dana’s movement beyond her home, where a search for autonomy becomes entangled in grooming, control, and exploitation.

What appears as escape gradually shifts into a condition of restriction. Relationships, dependency, and isolation form a structure that is difficult to recognise while inside it. The work holds this experience without spectacle, focusing instead on how control can develop quietly over time.

Dana eventually returns home. This return is not framed as defeat, but as a recovery of ground — a re-entry into safety on her own terms.

Works

Trafficked Abaya (Fire Ceremony)
A six-panel abaya marked with the word “Trafficked” is burned. The act does not erase what has happened, but separates Dana from the label imposed onto her. What burns is not the experience, but the naming of it.

Years of Stolen Youth
From the ashes emerges a second abaya bearing the phrase “Years of Stolen Youth”. Gold tally marks are embroidered across the surface, each representing a day of recovery, marking time not only as loss, but as continuation.

Return (Site Revisit)
Dana returns to the site where she was exploited, this time by choice. The space is no longer one of control, but one that is re-entered and redefined.

Spatial Elements

Trafficked Graffiti
Marks extend across surfaces, reflecting fragmentation, memory, and the difficulty of containing experience within a single narrative or place.

The work holds the tension between what cannot be undone and what can be reclaimed, allowing space for return, recovery, and the redefinition of self beyond imposed labels.