No Trespassing: Artists Comment on the Migration Crisis

Exhibition on View:
March 27 – May 17, 2024
Opening Reception:
Wednesday, March 27, 5:00 – 8:00 PM

The Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City of New York University present the exhibition No Trespassing: Artists Comment on the Migration Crisis curated by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos that will run from March 27 through May 17th, 2024. The exhibition will be celebrated with an opening reception on Wednesday March 27th from 5-8PM

The participating artists are: Fares Alhalabi, Antigoni Kavatha, Despina Meimaroglou, Despo Magoni, Elli Chrysidou, Johnny Illescas, Kim Weston, Laura Veles Drey, Lydia Venieri, Marina Leybishkis, Olga Rudenko, Pam Cooper, Tom Haviv, Wm Tyler Morgan, Ye’ela Wilschanski and Rodney Zelenka.

During a time when shifting boundaries define our way of life which is driven by global movement, strategic concerns, and economic markets, we come face to face with unfamiliar customs and cultures. Nowhere is this more evident than in the refugee crisis that has developed in Europe and the U.S. in the last few years. In many ways it involves tribal territory as it did with the Alaskan pipeline project, or the re-definition of national borders as seen in Brexit and the re-distribution of natural and man-made resources that accompanies them. In a more violently immediate way, is the displacement of people through war as in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and other hot spots around the globe. Moreover, one of the most relevant reasons behind migration is poverty evidencing itself in the example of the US/Mexico border crossings. International non-profit organizations tried to alleviate the impending emergency worldwide and since then, different institutions as well as philanthropic corporations or state universities are actively struggling to combat various ongoing humanitarian catastrophes, such was John Jay College’s generous initiative to freely provide its North Hall Space to serve as a processing center for asylum seekers.

Some migrant communities or displaced ethnic groups tend to stick to their own cultural and artistic values despite the ever-growing tendency of global cultural formations, where different traditions and dissimilar customs are being uncontrollably assimilated into a single universal popular culture of ever-changing forms and ephemeral trends. Simultaneously, they apprehend the new ideologies or creative stimuli of each hosting country, providing the adoptive artistic community with fresh, profound ideas, and unique cultural perspectives, manifested through a lens that betrays nostalgia for their homeland. Many modern artists like Alfred Stieglitz, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko or Willem deKooning were in fact European refugees to the United States, who innovated through their artistic vocabularies while coming in contact with American culture, but also, contributed greatly to New York’s formative art scene.

This exhibition collates art and artists of divergent cultures working in a variety of media, who visually address the subject of migration/immigration legal and, so called- illegal, and its inherent problems. In its diversity the show examines migration but also the problematics of acculturation in the adoptive countries. In one way or another, these artists all explore, the idea of nationhood, and of people clinging to their own customs and traditions like haunting melodies; the pivotal longing for a long-gone homeland clashes with the required obligation to adapt and synthesize foreign outlooks within a diverse nexus of various phenomena.

 

For more information contact:

Please call or write to the curator Thalia Vrachopoulos at [email protected] or

The Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery
212-237-1439
[email protected]
www.shivagallery.org
Gallery Hours: 12 PM- 6 PM, M – F