Two weeks ago I went to Queen’s House and chanced upon the temporary exhibition, “Crossings.” I didn’t expect it to change how I think about why I make art, but it did.
I’ve spent a lot of time treating my own practice as something separate from the world, working through what’s within. This exhibition reminded me that art can also be a place where other people’s experiences get to exist, and be witnessed, in a subtle but confrontational way.
The exhibition presents the lived experiences of migrants themselves, each piece exploring what it means to cross, search for a better life, and find a home in a new, adopted society.
The first work that stayed with me is a painting inspired by Hokusai and Indo-Persian miniature techniques. I was drawn to it aesthetically, as it reminded me of the miniature paintings I saw in Uzbekistan. Here, a little boat is breaking through (or breaking free?), challenging the stability of borders in face of “stormy” times.
The piece that affected me most, however, was Đorđe Balmazović’s No. 9 from Halab, Syria (above). We are now the ones completing the journey, our eyes traversing the canvas to understand the sheer sacrifice people go through in search of a safer land – a sacrifice media coverage often fails to convey. The map was co-produced with migrants themselves in an asylum centre in Serbia.
Forget about art for art’s sake. This is the real stuff.
The collective states they care not for “big budgets, or institutional visibility,” their attention being on “the process of building human relations and creating something together out of nothing.” That’s what I’m looking for in my art – pieces that give viewers “power to become creators themselves.”
I walked out of Queen’s House with a question I’m still grappling with: what would it look like for my own work to do that – not just to be looked at, but to hold someone else’s story, or invite someone in to make their own?
