Lucid Borders

Lucid Borders explores the tangled relationship between migration and alienation. The exhibition confronts the image of the migrant as a critical figure in contemporary culture, setting up a dialogue between the political and the emotional in the movement of bodies, languages and cultures.

The exhibition focuses attention on how migrants are ‘othered’ and made aware of difference. Alterity emerges from the construction of borders, a topography that both secures and homogenises the notion of territory and its imagined identities. Lucid Borders explores an alternative, whereby borders are understood not as a demarcation or a limit, but as a place of contact – a liminal space where the image of the migrant is negotiated, inspected and institutionalised. The artists in this show lucidly explore de-territorialisation and alienation, and in doing so, raise the question: must migrants carry the border with them?

Lucid Borders includes the work of artists Meriç Algün, Mustafa Boga, Ken Nwadiogbu, Olgaç Bozalp, Daniel Greenfield-Campoverde and the collective Kneed (Ishwari Bhalerao and Leonie Rousham).

An MA Curating exhibition by students from the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex, curated by Dongxian Zhang, Olatoye Salawudeen, Konstantinos Sfikas, Jingyi Chen, Cynthia Iruobe, Rabia Perwaiz, Santiago Valencia Parra and Adhithi Ravikumar.

Image: Mustafa Boğa, Where do we go? 2016. Courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Juanan Eguiguren.