Curated by Niels Van Tomme, Director of Arts and Media at Provisions Learning Project in Washington, DC, and organized with the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Baltimore, Where Do We Migrate To? explores diverging ways in which forms of migration, experiences of displacement, and questions of belonging have been addressed by artists in recent years. Displaying a multiplicity of migratory encounters, the exhibition presents multiple perspectives about its subject matter, opening up a range of political, psychological, poetic, and pragmatic manifestations of the contemporary migrant experience.
Situating the contemporary individual in a world of advanced globalization, Where Do We Migrate To? proposes to imagine the migrant as a figure, a conceptual entity, through which it is possible to recognize our present day selves. As someone who enters from the outside to re-define the inside, can the migrant be turned into an agent of change, instead of a subject of exclusion? What can we discover from its ability to adapt to temporary, uncertain, and hostile circumstances, from its experience of never being able to fully settle down? And which lessons are to be learned from its fundamental form of expression: migration? Calling for an increasingly complex understanding of the human condition, the exhibition demonstrates ways in which the ongoing circulation of people across geopolitical, demographic, and cultural contexts is addressed and questioned through a wide selection of thought-provoking works of art.
Where Do We Migrate To? features nineteen internationally recognized artists and collectives: Acconci Studio, Svetlana Boym, Blane De St. Croix, Lara Dhondt, Brendan Fernandes, Claire Fontaine, Nicole Franchy, Andrea Geyer, Isola and Norzi, Kimsooja, Pedro Lasch, Adrian Piper, Raqs Media Collective, Société Réaliste, Julika Rudelius, Xaviera Simmons, Fereshteh Toosi, Philippe Vandenberg, and Eric Van Hove.
An accompanying film and video program, curated by Sonja Simonyi, will feature a series of programs/screenings by a broad range of international filmmakers and video artists: Chantal Akerman, Herman Asselberghs, Ursula Biemann, Pavel Brailia, Oliver Husain, Isaac Julien, Tanja Ostojic, Egle Rakauskaite, Ben Russell, Ulirch Seidl, Usha Seejarim, Lonnie van Brummelen, and Siebren de Haan.
Admission to the exhibition and film program is free. The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and is located in the Fine Arts Building of UMBC. For more information call 410-455-3188, or www.umbc.edu/cadvc.
Catalogue
Where Do We Migrate To?
Contributions by Svetlana Boym, Amitava Kumar, Aaron Schuster, and Niels Van Tomme Published by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture
Available from D.A.P | Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
Panel discussion
Migrants Everywhere
Presentations by Pedro Lasch, Xaviera Simmons, and Niels Van Tomme
April 21, 2011, 4–6 pm
Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture
The exhibition and catalogue are made possible, in part, with the support of the Flemish Government through Flanders House New York.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by Julika Rudelius’s video Where Do We Migrate To, 2005.
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study of contemporary art and visual culture, critical theory, art and cultural history, criticism, and the relationship between society and the arts. Disciplines represented include painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, digital art, video, film, television, design, architecture, advertising, and installation and performance art. The Center sponsors art exhibitions, community outreach and public art projects, and publications. Its exhibitions and accompanying travelogues—one-person and retrospectives shows, as well as thematic and experimental projects—give voice to the artists, subjects, and curatorial approaches that are often ignored or underrepresented in mainstream museums.
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