Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries:
Marginal Art in the Age of Migration

STREET ART MUSEUM [SAM], ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
14.05.2016 - 24.09.2016
Curated by Rafael Schacter

ALEX KURUNIS (UK) / BRAD DOWNEY & IGOR PONOSOV (US/RS) / CLEMENS BEHR (DE) / ELTONO (FR)

FILIPPO MINELLI (IT) / GAIA & MATA RUDA (US/VE) / JAMES BRIDLE (UK) / JAZOO YANG (KP)

JONATHAN HOLLINGSWORTH (US) / KIRILL KTO (RS) / MARTHA ATIENZA (PH/NL) / MERIJN HOS (NL)

NANO4814 (ES) / ROB PINNEY (UK) / SPY (ES) / SUPERPROJECT (NL) / TITA SALINA (ID) / VALERIO VICENZO (NL)

The closed city is full of boundaries and walls;
the open city possesses more borders and membranes [...]
The open city is a bottom up place;
it belongs to the people (Richard Sennett, 2015)

Borders and boundaries are distinct entities.

As explored by the sociologist Richard Sennett, the border is the zone of the highest organic interactivity and development. It is an engaged, permeable space, in ecological terms a space such as that between the land and the sea, a space in which different species thrive, intermix and exchange. The border is hence a space set in stark contrast to the territorially guarded, impenetrable nature of the boundary, a space, for example, such as the territorial perimeters of animals such as lions or wolves. The border is thus a margin, yet a site that contains the possibility of integration. The boundary a site in which segregation is the dominant mode.

In the age of migration that we now live, these distinctions take on new importance. Unlike the sterility and lifelessness of the boundary, borderlands are spaces in which contact between difference is unavoidable, in which cultural confrontation is mandatory. In this way, borders become sites in which new ideas and new identities can emerge. They become sites in which the intimacy of difference enables a new form of cosmopolitanism, a site in which interaction can act as a source of renewal and revitalisation.

Working with a group of artists for whom borders and boundaries act as their main site of production, a group of artists who both explore and transcend space within their work, Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries artistically explores the distinction between these two terms. It explores the spatial and social margins of our shared world, the fertility and vibrancy of the border compared to the sterility and aridity of the boundary.

At a time in which notions of purity are resurgent, in which ‘refugee’ and ‘crisis’ have become paired as if natural, Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries probes the edges which may be unstable but which are so too more flexible, more adaptable. It explores the inherent potentiality of the border, the diversity and multiplicity, the possibilities and powers that these in-between spaces provide.

For the Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries catalogue, please click HERE.

ALEX KURUNIS (UK)

In Danger, Not Dangerous

2015/2016. Photographic installation

The images presented by the photographer Alex Kurunis were taken in the Greek island of Kos in August 2015. As he himself describes:

“The Greek city of Kos is one of the key landing points for refugees crossing into Europe from Turkey. Setting up camp in the parks and peripheral areas of the town, many Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian families await there whilst the local migratory office process their papers for moving on to mainland Europe. I spent a week within one camp in August 2015 from which these photos are taken.

For these refugees, this time was imbued with hopes for a new life, free from the persecution which they fled. Yet also, the liminality of these stopping points within a larger journey to safety were and are characterised by a distinct sense of unknowing and anxiety.

Travelling to new places without a clear idea of where you will end up, each step of the way filled with moments hinging upon a thin line between life and death; from the treacherous conditions in which they crossed the channel, to more everyday dangers from lack of sanitation and illness.

It was inspiring to meet these wonderful people, sharing stories, laughter, sadness. Some people, having come from comfortable lives previously, were making this monumental journey not out of 'economic tourism' but out of genuine need for safety; having lost their homes and livelihoods, those lucky enough still to have family at their side cherished them and made the most of what little they now had. 

What was clear more than anything however was that contrary to the persistent heartless portrayals in populist media, these people posed no threat to anyone: they are in danger, not dangerous. 

Within the timeframe in which I was there, I got to know the people I photographed, as opposed to taking brief moments from them. In keeping with this, I developed and printed the images the same day they were shot and gave them back to nearly all of those photographed. To have something in solid form on a journey marred by such perilous uncertainty and precariousness can be of comfort to some”.

BRAD DOWNEY & IGOR PONOSOV (US/RS)

Double Yippie Hollow Super Power

2016. Slides, DIA projector, flags, photographs, socks, coins, drawings in collaboration with Clemens Behr, SPY, Paco, and Fillipo Minelli, computer guts, digital prints, plastic, wood, plexi-glass, mounting hardware, sound installation, radio, headphones, cables, paint, chess set, soviet fabric, and industrial  spools.

Double Yippie Hollow Super Power is a joint project between artists Brad Downey from the USA and Igor Ponosov from Russia. Taking inspiration from the parlor game “cadavre exquis” or “exquisite corpse” (a method by which a collection of words or images is collaboratively assembled), the pair have sought to combine the varying national symbols of their home nations into a new, exquisite set of iconic forms. The “unity of the opposites” that they have created – utilizing objects such as flags, coins, and anthems – plays with the sacrality of these national symbols, the almost divine status that they contain. Moreover, it alludes to the strangely intimate relationship that the two countries are entwined in. Whilst apparent opposites, common enemies, both locations create their identity through their connection with the other: the objects Downey and Ponosov have thus created contain both a critical and playful edge. They ridicule the stereotypes of both themselves and each other in the same moment.

CLEMENS BEHR (DE)

The Final Frontier (Space) / Our House (In the Middle of the Street)

2016. Laminate doors, wooden pallets, wooden battons, hinges, and acrylic paint / Acrylic and spray paint on wall

Mimicking and playing with their settings through a process of transformative deconstruction, Clemens Behr’s geometric shapes and abstract forms come to distort the viewers’ perspective, merging two and three dimensional spaces in a single plane.

His installation for Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries acts as what he terms a “social maze”. Utilising one of the most classic example of borders/boundaries, the common doorway, the work explores the potentially empowering or inhibiting abilities of these structures: as one door opens, another closes, enabling some and disabling others in the same moment. As a participatory sculpture, its visual possibilities become endless. However conceptually it demonstrates how every decision we take effects those around us. Like many of Behr’s installations, this work was produced with what was at hand, in this case the products and detritus of the factory site itself.

Behr’s mural tackles another question however. Playing with the shadows and design of the adjacent fence, with the actuality of space (and time) versus the potentiality of painting, he questions the boundaries of art itself: Can it go beyond reflection to truly generate the new?

ELTONO (FR)

Random Geopolitical Map / Upside-down Fence

2016. Acrylic paint on wall / Barbed wire, steel poles, metal fence, laminate warning signs

Eltono’s mural is a reaction to the absurd rationality of national boundaries. As opposed to the natural flow of borders (as can be seen in perhaps the world’s only natural country, Chile), the carving up of the planet’s boundaries happens at right angles: diagonal, horizontal, and vertical lines cutting up the planet into a perfectly linear patchwork.

As such, Eltono has created his own world map using a generative art technique; using a basic randomizer to choose a digit between 1 and 7, the numbers which emerge then come to define both the color of the country and its borders, indicating the direction that each color, and each boundary will thus take.

Unlike his mural, for his fence installation, Eltono presents us with the opposite of the rationality as seen within maps. Rather, he displays a perfectly irrational object, an upside-down fence. For Eltono, however, the inversion of the fence makes it something lighter, not an object that prevents our movement, but a compact object that can be upended “as if the wind had blown it upside down”. As he continues, “it's not a massive obstacle anymore. A fence that can be flipped is a territory that can be freed.”

FILIPPO MINELLI (IT)

Untitled / A Revolution Nobody Cares About

2016. Scaffold, laminate photographic prints, flags, and spray paint and acrylic on containers / Acrylic paint on wall

Fillipo’s installation for Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries explores different border zones throughout the globe. From the sea border of North and South Korea to that of Mexico and California; from Morocco and Mauritania to Cambodia and Vietnam; from the invisible border between Northern Mali and the disputed territories of the Azawad; to abandoned NATO bunkers at the Belgian Dutch border, these images present us with some of the most politically fraught locations on the planet which, somehow, contain a strangely alluring beauty. Alongside this, Filippo presents a series of Whatsapp conversations documenting his personal struggle to gain entry into Russia for this exhibition: a series of Kafkaesque scenarios in which he was sent from location to location in a seeming test of his resistance. The installation as a whole can be seen to bring together Filippo’s joint obsession with political, industrial and internet aesthetics.

His mural, A Revolution Nobody Cares About / Nobody Cares About a Revolution speaks, quite loudly, for itself.

GAIA & MATA RUDA (US/VE)

If Capital Can Move So Freely Why Can’t Bodies?

2016. Acrylic and spray paint on wall

Gaia and Mata Ruda have produced a monumental work for Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries, a work which functions in the classical tradition of political muralism. Using imagery from the filmmaker Marc Silver and photographers Jonathan Hollingsworth and Alex Kurunis (both of whom show other work within the exhibition itself), Gaia and Ruda present us with an assemblage of figures and artefacts which together convey a dense narrative about contemporary migration. Including individuals and stories from the borders of the USA and Latin America as well as Africa and Europe, the artists also produced a group portrait of three Uzbekistani employees at the factory who work and live in the very site where the mural exists. 

The story Gaia and Mata tell is one of inequality and injustice, a story of the imbalance of our contemporary global system. Yet within this it contains hope and strength, the strength of the individuals who strive to fight these inequities on a daily basis.

JAMES BRIDLE (UK)

Flag for No Nations / Satellite Shadow

2016. Insulation blankets and flag poles / Acrylic paint on asphalt

Bridle’s Flag for No Nations installation brings together the multiple histories of the today eponymous “space” or “insulation blankets”. From their primary usage by NASA to their latter employment for athletes post-competition, from their utilization in post-disaster situations to their use by refugees on the borders of Europe, Bridle explores how this singular technology can act, as he says, as a “moment at which our ideas of technology as a series of waymarks on the universal march of human progress falter and fall apart”.

Similarly, his Satellite Shadow, a work playing off his previous Drone Shadow series, aims to envision the invisible. A life-size, 1:1 representation of an actual satellite (a Russian reconnaissance satellite called Persona, launched as Kosmos 2486), for Bridle the satellite represents the huge network of data that invisibly connects people across the world; its depiction thus acts not only as an image of the endless, borderless qualities of space, but also of the hidden technologies that literally and metaphorically envelop us.

You can find essay’s by Bridle on these works on his website http://booktwo.org/

JAZOO YANG (KP)

Dots / Painting Blocks

2016, Korean ink on wall / Found objects, cement, and acrylic paint on wooden palletes

Jazoo Yang’s Dots series originates from her work in her native Korea, in particular within areas of the city going through the process of redevelopment. Using traditional Korean ink, and solely using her thumbprint (a marking used as a signature on important documents), Yang’s work sought to bring focus on the increasing amount of “redevelopment refugees” in the city

For Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries, Yang has expanded her Dots Series to incorporate the issue of refugees and migrants in Europe and further beyond. Working mainly on her own but also with immigrant workers from the factory itself, Yang discusses their stories, their histories, their existence with these individuals as they mark the wall together. These imprints act as a record of this moment whilst remaining entirely silent.

In Yang’s Painting Block Works, this theme of memory and regeneration continues. Exploring the violent so central to the contemporary city, Yang wants to ask how much we perceive our lives and make independent decisions within these oppressive environments. She aims to bring these problems to the surface through rebuilding them with the materials we so readily abandon, in Korea using objects from deserted houses and buildings, here in Russia using the detritus and ephemera of the factory itself.

JONATHAN HOLLINGSWORTH(US)

Left Behind: Life and Death Along the U.S. Border

2016. Photographic installation

Jonathan’s work for Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries is taken from his book Left Behind: Life and Death Along the U.S. Border. Working in Pima County, Arizona, a location with the highest documented number of migrant deaths in the United States, Jonathan’s images come from the Pima County Forensic Science Center, a site in which 2,470 foreign nationals who died in the deserts of Southern Arizona were taken between 2001 and 2015. Photographically depicting a segment of these deaths, in particular the personal effects of the many nameless migrants whose identity cannot be establish, the photos capture the reality and minutiae of this precarious life. The images thus not only give voice to the voiceless but identity to the unidentified. Moreover, the hope is that the work can then act as a spur for further dialog on immigration reform. In this way, the dead may once more help the living.

KIRILL KTO (RS)

Incomprehensible

2016. Acrylic and spray paint on wall

Kirill’s work for Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries arose through his correspondence with curator Rafael Schacter. Focusing on the barrier of language and the complexity of translation, the work is about the impossibility of understanding and the unwillingness to understand. As KIRILL says “I understood only a small percentage of what we discussed and so decided to make this the heart of the work”. It is thus the borders and boundaries of language that KIRILL takes aim. As he continues “there are two borders of misunderstanding: you see unfamiliar letters and you do not understand everything completely. Signifier and signified become equally incomprehensible. Or even it’s a familiar language, but still it is not clear”. Kirill’s work, although colourful and bright, is in fact the image of alienation. The image of the migratory and the incomprehensible.

MARTHA ATIENZA (PH/NL)

Melbourne 37°51'14.0"S 144°54'33.0"E

2016. Video Installation

Experimental filmmaker and visual artist Martha Atienza lives and works in Rotterdam and Bantayan Island in the Philippines. Island life, the sea, and seafarers, provide a key thread throughout her work, her entire immediate family being tightly linked to the sea in term of location and profession. For Atienza, being on ships, in particular filming from them, is thus a way to explore both her physical and emotional relationship with water.

For Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries, Atienza presents us with a video-work depicting the port of Melbourne, Australia. Whilst many refugees have attempted to seek asylum in Australia, the majority of them coming by boat, the country has a notoriously strict immigration policy. Military vessels patrol all Australian waters and intercept migrant boats, commonly towing them back to Indonesia (the most common point of departure) or sending asylum seekers back in inflatable dinghies or lifeboats. Atienza’s video seeks to physically connect us to water seeing land from a distance. We are put at ease and the image becomes familiar. Yet the complex narrative of migration and discrimination, in particular within a settler location, hangs silently around the edges of the scene.

MERIJN HOS (NL)

Lost in a Dream

2016. Acrylic and spray paint on wall

Merijn’s mural has a simple, yet vitally important message. His five globes show us the development from a basic binary of black and white to a densely colored, intricate, heterogeneous space. The final image thus shows us a planet in which, as Merijn says, “everything harmonizes. All the colors are there together and they all work and flow seamlessly with each other. Of course borders exist in many ways, but if we take it a step further and forget about the rules and just go with our feeling this is what I think can be understood as the ideal. That we should not be limited by the rationality of borders. Probably a bit of a cliché. But that’s how I see it and feel it”. 

NANO4814 (ES)

Untitled

2016. Acrylic and spray paint on wall

Nano4814’s half-abstract, half-figurative mural for Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries demonstrates the strangely discomforting yet visually arresting style which we can now instantly recognize as his own. Frequently focusing upon the apprehension he has with his own work, Nano’s characters can often be seen to be in states of tension or strain (both literally and metaphorically), an angst reinforced by their compressed captivity within their sites. Moreover, his use of brick-walls, barriers, and wooden shards, symbols that act as leitmotifs throughout his work, play with the idea of boundaries as objects that encourage intrusion and trespass: Like masks, these borders both suggest and occlude a veiled truth, hinting whilst hiding, implying yet escaping. It is thus the very limitation that enables us to venture beyond.

ROB PINNEY (UK)

The ‘Jungle’

2016. Photographic installation

Excerpts from a text by the artist:

“…

‘The Jungle’ — the term used to refer to the shanty town settlements that have become synonymous with Calais — has no fixed location. But it is most commonly associated with a former landfill site not far from the ferry port that at its peak during the 2015 refugee crisis held a population of some 8,000 people.

The political discourse around the jungle and those temporarily seeking shelter there thrives on generalisations. Labelled a ‘swarm’ and a ‘bunch of migrants’ by British Prime Minister David Cameron, in the eyes of many the people here are not individuals but a collective mass — the object of a confused war of words: ‘refugees’, ‘asylum seekers’, ‘economic migrants’.

The reality is far more complicated. Many have fled war and political persecution. Others, notably from Afghanistan and Iran, left to avoid being made to fight for a cause they did not believe in. Many will show you photographs on their mobile phones of family already living in the United Kingdom, whom they hope to join. And some have spent years, occasionally decades, living and working in the UK, only to find themselves suddenly ejected. For them, the journey is not one of migration but a return home.

…”

SPY (ES)

Go Home / Crisis / Basket

2016. Printed banner on chimney / Acrylic paint on oil barrels / Basketball hoop and backboard on containers, acrylic paint on asphalt

SpY’s deceptively simple yet conceptually ingenious interventions focus on the upturning of spatial and societal norms. Using irony and humour to create a dialogue with the viewer, SpY attempts to impress multiple readings onto a space, re-presenting it as a “frame of endless possibilities”.

His set of works here follow this method precisely. In particular, his giant work Go Home, at first an apparently aggressive, deeply antagonistic phrase (to put it mildly), plays with the variety of meanings that this expression can contain: the very ability to go home, for example, to return back to the place of one’s family, one’s birth, one’s life, is the very thing that most immigrants desire but simply cannot undertake (whether due to war or famine, economic or ecological pressures). To be able to go home is thus a privilege that not all of us have.

As with his famous method of renegotiating the set rules of sporting activities, provoking, as he says “disorder and chaos through context and content”, SpY’s works do not simply invert or subvert their spaces but playfully distort them. They “misuse” their environments to show the latent possibilities that lie within.

SUPERPROJECT (NL)

Four Zero

2016, High Pressure Laminate installation

SUPERPROJECT, a two-man design operation spearheaded by visual artist Jasper Niens and industrial designer Thijs Ewalts, focus on computational design and digital fabrication, embracing art, architecture, engineering and technology. For Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries, they have created Four Zero, a space within a space, a location only accessible through four, tunnel-like entrances. Due to the curvature of the entrances, the visitor is not immediately sure where they will end up. As such, the work is about revealing and concealing, possibility and difficulty; once people enter the space they can either feel locked up and exposed or protected and safe within its embrace. 

TITA SALINA (ID)

1001th Island: The Most Sustainable Island in Archipelago

2015/2016. Video, trash, fishing net and wood

Tita Salina’s 1001st Island is a work exploring the changing borders and boundaries of Jakarta. A city which is currently sinking between 2.9 and 6.7 inches per year, and which exists mainly below sea level, Jakarta is currently undertaking a huge land reclamation and producing a 32 kilometer sea wall to try and protect its boundaries, a project that will construct 17 new islands and take an estimated 30 years to complete. The installation presented here, a reproduction of an artificial island built by Salina and local fisherman using marine debris and litter, aims to highlight the negative impacts of the project, in particular the fact that the city refuses to fix the causes of its problems — namely, excessive groundwater extraction and inefficient waste management. Salina thus connects the reclamation and land issue with the human waste that plagues the ocean and the future of the traditional fishermen who live and work within this now perilous space.

VALERIO VICENZO (NL)

Borderline, Frontiers of Peace

2016. Photographic Installation

Text by Valerio Vincenzo:

“Borderline, the Frontiers of Peace strives to show the results of a historical change that has taken place over the last decades in Europe. Since the signature of the Schengen Agreements in 1985, the borders of most of the European continent have been erased little by little from the landscapes and people’s imaginations. These Agreements are a giant leap in the progressive unification of Europe and the emergence of a European conscience.

Today, with 26 countries belonging to the Schengen Area, 16,500 km of borders can be freely crossed. The attribution of the Nobel Peace Prize to Europe in 2012 has confirmed the historical importance of this slow, almost imperceptible, but radical change. With the help of a GPS and detailed maps, I have conducted many trips along these "erased" borderlines, with the intention of capturing the essence of these now-peaceful crossings.

Even if sometimes these pictures have been taken thousands of km away from each other, they all provide images that are far from the stereotype that we tend to associate with the notion of border. What is a border anyway?”

Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries Films