The show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston considers the way in which contemporary artists are responding to the displacement of people
Entitled When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art, the exhibition currently running in the Bridgitt and Bruce Evans and Karen and Brian Conway Galleries of the Institute of Contemporary Art until January 26, 2020 is intended to highlight the fact that we are currently witnessing the highest levels of national and international movement on record.
The title of the show is taken from a poem by Warsan Shire, a Somali-British poet who gives voice to the experiences of refugees. Through artworks made since 2000 ranging from personal accounts to poetic meditations, and executed in a range of media, including sculpture, installation, painting, and video, twenty artists from more than a dozen countries including Colombia, Cuba, France, India, and Iraq produce diverse artistic responses to migration.
Artists in the exhibition include Kader Attia, Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Hayv Kahraman, Reena Saini Kallat, Richard Mosse, Carlos Motta, Yinka Shonibare, Xaviera Simmons, and Do-Ho Suh among others. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with an essay by Eva Respini and Ruth Erickson, and texts by prominent scholars Aruna D’Souza, Okwui Enwezor, Thomas Keenan, Peggy Levitt, and Uday Singh Mehta.
After its run closes in Boston, When Home Won’t Let You Stay will travel to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis from February 23 to May 24, 2020, then to the Iris and Gerald B. Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University from October 2, 2020 to January 24, 2021.
