Interesting article.
Published in The Wall Street Journal last week. Link:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-europe-and-america-migrants-take-on-the-art-world-1451509444$
In Europe and America, Migrants Reach the Art World
Where to see the artists’ works
In Kader Attia’s installation “The Dead Sea,” a wave seems to have left behind a sinister cargo: jeans, sweaters and T-shirts, all in shades of blue and eerily empty, as if “the sea had rejected them,” the artist says. For many visitors, the work recalls the recent picture of a drowned Syrian boy and other images of refugees.
Though born in France, Mr. Attia, who also spent much of his childhood in Algeria, identifies with the Algerian teenagers he has photographed resting on huge concrete blocks and staring out at the Mediterranean. The installation and the photos above it form part of the exhibition “Streamlines: Oceans, Global Trade and Migration” at the Deichtorhallen, on view until March 13 in Hamburg, Germany.
The 45-year-old artist, now based in Berlin, is one of numerous contemporary artists delving into the highly charged issue of migration. “It’s one of the themes that are going to define the latter half of this century,” says London-based John Akomfrah, whose art often focuses on the subject. His 2015 video installation, “Vertigo Sea,” layers ethereal underwater scenes with shots of African migrants making ocean crossings. The three-screen piece, which made its debut at the Venice Biennale in May, will be at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol, England from Jan. 16.
John Akomfrah's 'Vertigo Sea' (2015) which is a three-channel video installation with sound that runs 48 minutes. PHOTO: SMOKING DOGS FILMS/LISSON GALLER
Frequently referencing the African diaspora, Mr. Akomfrah’s videos grow in part out of his own history. As a child, he moved with his mother from Ghana to the U.K. A solo show of his work at London’s Lisson Gallery, opening Jan. 22, will explore the subject in a two-part video installation with the working title “Auto-da-fé.” A pervasive subject in the news of the past year—Germany alone accepted an estimated one million refugees—migration has long fascinated artists. Jacob Lawrence’s 1941 “Migration Series”chronicled the mass movement of African-Americans from the rural South to the North in a series of 60 paintings, while Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photo “Migrant Mother” remains an emblematic rendering of displacement during the Great Depression. Contemporary migration “will have a profound impact on what culture will be,” says Leah Dickerman,who curated an exhibition on Lawrence’s “Migration Series” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2015.
In November, at Norway’s Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Oslo-based artist Vanessa Bairdreceived one of the country’s biggest art awards, the Lorck Schive Prize, for her large-scale mural, “I Don’t Want to Be Anywhere, but Here I Am.” Disturbing and surreal, the pastel work illustrates a dark fairy-tale like world with an ocean that, if you look closely, contains gruesome portraits of drowning refugees. The images are set against mundane daily activities, like reading a book or drinking tea. Ms. Baird says that she was inspired by a visit to the migrant community on the outskirts of Calais, France. The piece will be on display through Feb. 28.
Michele Mathison's 'Chapungu, Shiri yedenga (bird of heaven)' PHOTO: MICHELE MATHISON/TYBURN GALLERY
In Miami, at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Carola Bravo’s “Blurred Borders” project takes a personal route. The Venezuelan-born artist, who now lives in Florida, drew on her own experience migrating to the U.S. from Caracas four years ago. A video installation layers images of birds in flight, yellow butterflies and classic American artwork like Lawrence’s “Migration Series.” “The only way to belong to a new place is to mix—to mix what you bring with you, the best of you, and what your new country is offering you,” she says. “I decided my work had to do the same.”
Others see migration as a symbol of the larger human condition. “The migrant underlines this idea that we are always moving toward something else—that we are always incomplete,” says Niels Van Tomme, curator of a traveling exhibition entitled “Where Do We Migrate To?” now at the Värmlands Museum, in Karlstad, Sweden. The show, which ends Feb. 22, features work by some 20 contemporary artists who have placed migration at the center of their work.
In February London’s Tyburn Gallery will feature Michele Mathison’s sculptural work “Zimbabwe Birds” as a part of a solo show for the Johannesburg-based artist. The piece re-creates in cast-iron culturally significant stone carvings from the 13th and 14th centuries, later looted by British colonizers.
The work builds on the artist’s interest in displacement, a theme central to his 2014 work “Refuge,” in which he recreated 20 white tents, originally used as temporary housing for migrants, on an open field in Johannesburg. Over the course of the show, under pressure from wind and weather, the tents began to degrade.
“It’s part of the impermanence of the work, but also of the situation,” says Mr. Mathison.
--
The installation 'La Mer Morte' (The Dead Sea) by French artist Kader Attia on display at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany, in December. PHOTO: MARKUS SCHOLZ/EPA
No comments:
Post a Comment