"Uprooted"

A Visual Engagement of Forced Displacement and its Causes - Curated by Khalid Kodi

Showing at the Brant Gallery

Massachusetts College of Art and Design
South Building, 3rd Floor
617-879-7400

April 14th – 24th, 2008
Reception: April 24th 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Refugee Blues by W.H. Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions and some are living in holes:
Yet there is no place for us,
My dear, yet there is no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now,
My, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows a n old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can’t do that,
My dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
‘If you’ve got no passport, you’re officially dead’;
But we are still alive,
My dear, but we are still alive…

The twentieth century and the new millennium have been marked with massive forced displacement and global refugees movements. These massive movements stem from a shouting lack of basic rights, injustice and insecurity. They reflect deep local injustices.
Dislocated artists often use different genres to process, articulate, and document their and their communities’ experience of loss and displacement. They use different genres to reconstruct “home”, and to resist the factors behind violent and forced displacement.
Through visual art, artists from Sudan, Chad, Iran, and the USA reflect conflict, violence, and destructive “development” schemes that force communities into displacement and exile.

Featuring works by John Michalczyk, Naveed Nour, Adam Abdalla, Charles A. Meyer, Elshafei Dafalla Mohamed, and Khalid Kodi.