Hanover Airport by Ho-Yeol Ryu

Ho-Yeol Ryu
Flughafen, 2009, digitalprint

Life takes us to different destinations. The vast majority of the world's population stays fairly close to home throughout their lives, but a growing number of people are moving. They move for pleasure, for cultural awareness, and for economic reasons. Some stay for a short time, while others make another country their new home forever. The exhibition “Migrations” explores these different movements and focuses on the life-changing aspects of cultural relocation—the very complicated issue of immigration.

The curator, herself an immigrant, explores the chaotic turns and altered perceptions of life in another country. “Migrations” includes work by 16 artists from around the world who work in various media. Some works approach these issues through the consideration of a traveling, nomadic life; other works explore more directly the effects of crossing the border, for economic or other reasons; while still other works reveal the transformation of the city itself—either the chaotic nature of international hybridization or the cutting off from social interaction.

In our globalized society, where the world is a hastily hybridizing culture, there are still deep feelings of nationality, a continued missing of “home”, and a desire to know our place. The exhibition “Migrations” examines the way we approach our overall similarities as well as the varied ways we deal with our differences. The artists reveal how some of us find comfort in closing ourselves off to others, some of us bond with our “own” in the assimilation, some create distractions (economically fueled or otherwise) to keep the movement flowing, and still others simply continue to move. “Migrations” gives an outsider’s outlook on a world not completely one’s own in an attempt for viewers to see their own world in a new perspective. via Exhibition Migrations