Book Launch_Reframing Migration 13 June 2019 P21 Gallery London

Dear all,
You can now register to attend the book launch of my book.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
The launch is part of the exhibition, Sink Without Trace: An Exhibition on Migrant Death at Sea
Federica

Sink Without Trace_Exhibition on Migrant Death at Sea

Dear all,
I can finally share with you the information about the exhibition I am co-curating on the topical issue of migrant death at sea.
You can find all information about our exhibition here.
We are also working on a series of related events. Information will be included in the website. So stay tuned and plan your visit to London.

Moving Hearts - Migration Museum at the Workshop London 25 March 2018

Powerful installation by Australian artist Penny Ryan with clay human hearts made by hundreds of Londoners with messages for refugees. There's time till tomorrow to see it. Don't miss it!

click here for more information about the project

Facebook event page

Richard Mosse, Incoming (Barbican Art Gallery 15 February-23 April 2017)

Richard Mosse, Incoming

15 February 2017 - 23 April 2017Curve Gallery

Barbican Art Gallery has invited conceptual documentary photographer and Deutsche Börse Photography Prize winner Richard Mosse to create an immersive multi-channel video installation in the Curve. In collaboration with composer Ben Frost and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten, Mosse has been working with an advanced new thermographic weapons and border imaging technology that can see beyond 30km, registering a heat signature of relative temperature difference. Classed as part of advanced weapons systems under International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Mosse has been using this export controlled camera against its intended purpose, to create an artwork about the refugee crisis unfolding in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Libya, in Syria, the Sahara, the Persian Gulf, and other locations. 
Mosse is renowned for work that challenges documentary photography. In his recent work The Enclave (2013) – a six-channel installation commissioned by the Irish Pavilion for the 2013 Venice Biennale – Mosse employed a now discontinued 16mm colour infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome that transformed the green landscape of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo into vivid hues of pink to create a surreal dreamscape. Questioning the ways in which war photography is constructed, Mosse’s representation of the ongoing armed conflict in eastern Congo advocates a new way of looking.
Born in Ireland in 1980, Richard Mosse lives and works in New York and Ireland.

Please note, the exhibition will close at 6pm (last entry 5.30pm) on 16 February.

Representing the Calais Jungle GIDEON MENDEL: DZHANGAL (London, 6 January-11 February)

GIDEON MENDEL: DZHANGAL

Rivington Place (London)

Photographer Gideon Mendel has created a powerful installation using objects he gathered during visits to the 'Jungle' refugee camp in Calais.

By focusing on items such as toothbrushes, playing cards, worn-out trainers, teargas canisters, and children’s dolls, Mendel conjures alternative portraits of the 'Jungle' residents that also stand in for the plight of displaced people everywhere. 

The title of the project Dzhangal refers to a Pashto word meaning ‘This is the forest’, the origin of the contentious term 'Jungle'.

Mendel is noted for his long-term socially engaged projects. He initially went to Calais to teach photography to refugees part of a collaborative documentary project. He discovered that many refugees were hostile towards the camera and sceptical that it would ameliorate their situation. Many feared that being identified could undermine their asylum claims and lead to deportation.

Mendel’s response was to turn his attention to lost objects on the ground, collecting them and trying to understand the patterns that emerged. Through the display of discarded objects, Mendel highlights the residents’ humanity. Some objects evoke the daily violence many experienced, some reflect the banality and domesticity of lives there - including the plight of women and children - while artefacts from a deeper archaeological layer evidence the era before the camp existed.

This exhibition combines a series of large still life photographs of these objects with installations of found objects. Mendel regards his Dzhangal project as a way to create order from the disorder. It is an attempt to make sense of the complex relationships, politics, and situations found on the ground by restructuring the objects within the frameworks of art and photography. In these artefacts with all their ingrained grit and ashes, one senses the refugees’ struggle to live ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances, while the stench of smoke evokes the fire that turned to ashes their hopes for better lives in England.

During the concluding week of the exhibition, Mendel’s book, DZHANGAL will be released. Published by Gost Books, it will include 80 pages of images, along with texts by refugees, writer and broadcaster Paul Mason, and art historian Dominique Malaquais.

On the Jungle

The Jungle was the final incarnation of temporary refugee camps that sprang up around the Port of Calais in the past eighteen years. Initially, residents in the camps numbered in the hundreds— with an estimated 800 refugees in 2009. Since then, this number rapidly increased because of turmoil in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. In September 2014, there were approximately 1,300 refugees. By November 2015 numbers had risen to 6,000. There were up to 9,000 refugees residing in the Jungle in October 2016, when the camp was demolished.

Disappearance at Sea-Mare Nostrum_Exhibition BALTIC (Newcastle)

BALTIC _Centre for Contemporary Art | Newcastle | 27 January – 14 May 2017

This group exhibition draws attention to the journey undertaken by migrants and refugees to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Mare Nostrum, literally ‘our sea’, is the Latin name for the Mediterranean.

During 2015, some one million people sought to make the crossing, travelling through Turkey and Greece and from Libya to Italy, forced by wars in the Middle East, in Syria, Libya and Egypt, compelled by persecution. It has been the largest exodus of people in our times and it continues. The exhibition includes several new commissions and a broad range of artworks by artists from Syria, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Kenya and the UK, who have explored ways of addressing this humanitarian disaster.

Artists: James Bridle, Tomo Brody, Aikaterini Gegisian, ScanLAB Projects & Embassy for the Displaced, Forensic Architecture (Lorenzo Pezzani & Charles Heller), Jackie Karuti, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Hrair Sarkissian, Škart collective - Djordje Balmazovič, Wolfgang Tillmans, Watch the Med, Amnesty International

Photo Exhibition: Humans of Calais

Migration from the Perspective of Migrants

This photo exhibition of daily life in the refugee camp in Calais is the result of the research project Humans of Calais, which gives migrants a voice in order to understand their experiences from their own perspective. Residents of the Calais camp were given disposable cameras to record their daily lives in the camp. These visual snapshots, and the migrants’ narratives that accompany them, offer a unique insight into the ways in which migrants build their lives under difficult and makeshift circumstances, whilst also showing their ideas and dreams.
Researchers: Signe Sofie Hansen, Tara Flores, Ishita Singh and Layla Mohseni, MA Students from the Department of War Studies

Location: War Studies Meeting Room (K. 6.07)

Category: Culture, Exhibition

When: 11/11/2016 (17:00) - 02/12/2016 (17:00)

Refugee Week Launch at Southbank Centre (London)_19 June 2016

Counterpoints Arts is delighted to collaborate with Southbank Centre for the launch of Refugee Week in London on 19 June as part of their world famous Meltdown festival – curated by Guy Garvey.
Under the heading of Refugees Welcome, there will be an entire day of free activity at Southbank Centre involving Refugee Week partners. Musicians, poets and dancers will pop ­up across the site, and the marketplace will host activities and craft workshops.
The activity will culminate in The Boat We’re In, a concert inspired by the Red Cross produced album The Long Road and featuring Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant, Meltdown Director Guy Garvey, Mercury Prize nominated folk singer Nick Mulvey, Radio 6 Music favourite Nadine Shah, northern soul singer Josephine Oniyama and the Southbank Sinfonia.
Across the Royal Festival Hall there will be small boats installed as part of a project working with refugee communities.
More programme detail will be announced here shortly.

Papers. Festival of the art, culture and architecture of refugee crisis_ 12 June Barbican Centre, London

This critical celebration will examine the creative and urban culture which has emerged from refugee camps across Europe. It will bring together refugee artists, musicians, poets, chefs and builders with a programme of discussions taking place on multiple stages throughout the day.

DISCUSSIONS STAGE

A mix of short presentation and panel discussion with some of the world's leading thinkers on refugee camps and migration. Panels will examine the built responses which have emerged from camps in Calais, Dunkirk, Lesvos and Pikpa culminating in an open plenary discussion with all participants.

GARDEN ROOM

Music, film and discussion. This stage will incorporate a mix of live and recorded music with short films ma...de about and by those at the epicentre of the crisis.

THE CONSERVATORY

The Barbican's vast glass house will host a wide variety of art pieces and installations. It will become a gallery of the rich mix of strange and powerful art which has come from or been made in response to refugee camps. At the heart will be the Blue House by the artist Alpha - an art school and gallery rescued from the Jungle in Calais and rebuilt for the first time in the UK specially Papers.

THE TERRACE

Hanging above the tropical plants of the jungle-like conservatory is the terrace, a platform which will play host to a mix of built prototype demonstrations, makers and food. The Kent Refugee Action Catering will be running a micro restaurant showing their work with asylum-seeking boys in Folkstone.

Line up to be announced.

Curated by Robert Mull with The Worldwide Tribe, Phineas Harper, Daniela Puga, Grainne Hassett, Jake Raslan, Jayden Ali, Esme Mull and Cindy Palmano.


Papers is part of the London Festival of Architecture 2016
http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/papers

Facebook page of the event 

TICKETS available here

The Migration Museum Project presents: Call me by my name: Stories from Calais and beyond 2-22 June 2016

The Migration Museum Project presents: 
Call me by my name: Stories from Calais and beyond

The Calais camp has become a potent symbol of Europe’s migration crisis. Public opinion on this ever- evolving shantytown and its inhabitants is polarised: to some a threatening swarm seeking entry to our already overstretched island-nation, to others a shameful symbol of our failed foreign policy. Amid such debate, it is easy to lose sight of the tens of thousands of individuals who have found themselves in limbo in Calais, each with their own story and reasons for wanting to reach Britain.
Call me by my name: stories from Calais and beyond is a multimedia exhibition, taking place in a momentous month that sees both the EU referendum and Refugee Week. It explores the complexity and human stories behind the current migration crisis, with a particular focus on the Calais camp.
The exhibition features compelling works by established and emerging artists, refugees, camp residents and volunteers. These include a powerful new installation by award-winning artist Nikolaj Larsen, street art from Majid, drawings of Calais by illustrator Nick Ellwood, art and photography by camp residents, and an installation of lifejackets embedded with the stories of their wearers. It will serve as a forum for a range of discussions, film screenings and performances, including a poetry evening hosted by Michael Rosen. There will also be an opportunity for visitors to leave their responses, which will become part of an art piece by artist-in-residence, Cedoux Kadima.
The Migration Museum Project would like to thank the following donors for their generous grants and support, without which we would not have been able to stage this exhibition: Londonewcastle, Arts Council England, ESRC, Open University, COMPAS and all of the generous contributors to our crowdfunding campaign.

All details here

MIGRATIONS_exhibition at the Tate Britain

This ia a terrific exhibition. I went with my fourth year students and we were all impressed by the wide range of items displayed from 1500 to the present day.
Please go if you can. The exhibition remains open till 12 August 2012.

NOTHING IS MISSING. An Exhibition at UCL by Mieke Bal 20-21 September 2008

Some pictures from the Mieke Bal's exhibition!

Dear All,
It is a very great pleasure to announce an important event I am organizing for the UCL Mellon Programme. It is a video installation on migration by the cultural theorist and artist Mieke Bal called "Nothing is Missing".
The exhibition will take place at the UCL Haldane Room (North Cloister) and it will last two days, from the 20th to the 21st of Semptember 2008.
The 21st of September it will be included in the London Open House Festival. Many thanks to the UCL SLade School of Fine Arts for providing me with the audio-visual equipment.

Saturday 20 September Mieke Bal will inaugurate the exhibition with a lecture that will take place at the UCL Old Refactory at 12pm introduced by the UCL Vice-Provost Michael Worton and chaired by myself.
For further details click on the image.