When Home Won't Let You Stay - Living Room @ Minneapolis Institute of Art
CarryOn Homes—Living Room, 2020
Mixed media installation
Virtual tour: https://vimeo.com/showcase/6957005
Artist talk: https://new.artsmia.org/event/virtual-event-what-makes-a-home/
(Scroll through the gallery to see the full artist talk)
CarryOn Homes has created a “living room” where visitors are invited to rest and relax in the final gallery. They intend it to be a space of respite from the difficult realities associated with the migration journey depicted throughout the exhibition “When Home Won’t Let You Stay.” At the center of the installation are handmade pillows made from articles of clothing that are linked to the artists’ (and audience members’) intimate and varied experience of home. The installation immerses visitors in audio and video that feature stories of home, healing, and community found in the experience of local migrants and those living further afield. While the CarryOn Homes—Living Room is open to all, it also functions as a shared space created especially for local immigrant and refugee communities to access resources, connect, and have restful and restorative conversations.
This artwork was installed twice. The first iteration invited the visitors to interact with the artworks and participate, the second one allowed visitors to experience the artwork safely and from a distance.
About the exhibition:
“When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art” considers how contemporary artists are responding to the migration, immigration, and displacement of people today. The world is currently witnessing the highest levels of movement on record—the United Nations estimates that one out of every seven people in the world is an international or internal migrant who moves by choice or by force, with great success or great struggle.
Through artworks made since 2000 by 20 artists from countries such as Colombia, Cuba, France, India, Iraq, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this exhibition highlights diverse artistic responses to migration. Ranging from personal accounts to poetic meditations, the artwork features a range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, painting, and video.
Artists in the exhibition include CarryOn Homes, Ai Wei Wei, 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, among others.
“When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art” is a travelling exhibition developed by ICA Boston.
More about the show here
Press
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/21/when-home-wont-let-you-stay-artwork-addressing-global-migration
https://www.wbur.org/artery/2019/10/17/ica-when-home-wont-let-you-stay-migration-experience
https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-artist-collective-re-installs-art-for-pandemic-times/572020702/