Expression of Displacement Through Art: Brittany Catchings
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Welcome
This virtual exhibition explores the global reality of migration and displacement through contemporary and traditional art, by artists from diverse cultural backgrounds. The exhibition highlights personal narratives and the search for identity in unfamiliar lands. It confronts the emotional, physical, and political dimensions of both forced and voluntary movement.
In these artworks, the artists express the emotional and physical change caused by displacement, migration, and identity shifts through visual forms. The exhibition will present these themes through, graphic representations, documentary photography, symbolic installations, sculpture, multimedia works, and public art.
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The artworks depicted:
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Woven Chronicle – Reena Saini Kallat
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Reconstructing an Exodus History – Tiffany Chung
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The Mapping Journey Project – Bouchra Khalili
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Water Union: Small Boats – Isaac Julien
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The Game – Zélie Hallosserie
These artworks explore migration by art of maps, routes, and physical journeys. These artworks trace the paths of migrants and refugees, turning lines and landscapes into views of contemporary art expressing survival, loss, and movement. By visualizing routes across borders and oceans, these pieces highlight how displacement is not just about arrival or departure, but the journey itself. They transform migration from an abstract concept into a lived in moment.
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The artworks depicted:
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Migrant Mother – Dorothea Lange
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Exodus – Sebastião Salgado
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Incoming – Richard Mosse
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Migration – JC Candanedo
These artworks reveal the often realities of displacement. By capturing migrants and refugees in moments of struggle, endurance, and quiet dignity, the artists convey the human cost of global crises. As well as in performance. These artworks allow vulnerability and strength, confronting the injustices and humanitarian challenges that drive migration. The photographs allow for empathy and a show of action.
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The artworks depicted:
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Fugitive (Unbidden) – Joon Me Yoon
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Home is a Foreign Place – Zarina Hashmi
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Already – Lotus Kang
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Aluna – María Berrío
Centered on identity, these artworks examine how migration reshapes one’s sense of self and belonging. These artworks often draw from personal or collective memory, blending cultural symbols, ancestral references, and emotional landscapes. Reflecting the tension between home and exile. Through these pieces, the artists articulate the complexity of being physically relocated, emotionally rooted, and constantly redefining home.
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The artworks depicted:
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Law of the Journey – Ai Weiwei
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Hope – Adel Abdessemed
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La Mer Morte (The Dead Sea) – Kader Attia
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Exodus II – Mona Hatoum
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Migration in Four Parts – Dustin Yellin
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A Ship Named “Diaspora” – Mike McDonnell
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Border Cantos – Richard Misrach & Guillermo Galindo
These artworks uses symbolic forms like boats, suitcases, or salvaged objects to represent displacement. These installations are meant to be emotional and interactive. It is to show the physical burdens migrants carry and the emotional toll of being uprooted. Through symbolism and materiality, these works transform abstract into human stories of movement, resilience, and hope.
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Migration Nation by Shira Walinsky:
This mural-based project celebrates the stories of immigrants in urban communities with portraits, and symbols into public spaces. Showing how migration shapes and enriches city life.
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Trail of Tears by Benny Andrews:
This emotionally charged painting reflects on the forced removal of Native American communities during the 1830s. Andrews uses expressive, textured forms to convey pain, injustice, and cultural survival in the face of violent displacement.
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The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence:
A landmark series of narrative paintings, this work tells the story of the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the early 20th century. Lawrence combines bold colors and simplified forms to capture both the hardships and hopes of this historic movement.
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Mediterranean Sea View by Banksy:
This piece frames a sea-like landscape against the deadly reality of migrant drownings in the Mediterranean. Banksy's minimalist approach critiques the indifference of tourist culture and media to the humanitarian crisis unfolding just offshore.
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The Crossing by Shimon Attie:
A video installation showing refugee stories. By merging voices, light, and water, Attie creates a memory, and the fragile presence of displaced lives.