Aga Khan Museum celebrates the creativity and artistic contributions of newcomers with season focused on stories of immigration
Canada · · 2 min
Season of Immigration will feature 51 visual artists, 15 performances, and 10 speakers, representing more than 50 countries around the world.
Toronto, Canada, 4 March 2020 — The Aga Khan Museum ventures beyond the headlines about surging global migration with a new season celebrating the artistic contributions of immigrants and refugees.
The Museum’s Season of Immigration features three exhibitions that showcase the creativity of migrants and the artistic contributions they are making around the world. Accompanied by a global lineup of performing artists and thought leaders, these cutting-edge shows shine a spotlight on extraordinary individuals who use art and culture to overcome adversity, build lives, and enrich their communities in the face of mass displacement, climate change, and economic upheaval.
“In our era of unprecedented global migration, we at the Aga Khan Museum believe we have a duty to challenge narratives that cast immigrants and refugees as a threat to the integrity our communities,” says Henry S. Kim, the Museum’s Director and CEO. “As residents of Canada, we benefit enormously from welcoming newcomers and the perspectives they bring. By seizing opportunity in defiance of adversity, they embody the best of the human spirit.”
The Museum’s Winter/Spring 2020 season features 51 visual artists, 15 performances, and 10 speakers, representing more than 50 countries worldwide. Many are immigrants or refugees themselves, while others are descendants of recent immigrants. “We are proud to amplify the voices of artists and thinkers with deeply personal connections to migration,” says Dr. Ulrike Al-Khamis, the Museum’s Director of Collections and Public Programs. “Their stories, and the artistic practices they inspire, have much to tell us about how immigration can enhance and enrich society.”
Bringing forward human stories of immigration and migration is part of the Museum’s ongoing efforts to promote understanding between communities and cultures. “We invite visitors to embrace the power of art to build bridges between people of disparate backgrounds and belief systems,” says Kim. “Art, in its most potent forms, instills a heightened understanding of our shared humanity, fosters personal connections, and pierces through the constructed barriers of race, nationality, and ideology.”
Highlights of the Museum's Winter/Spring 2020 programme include:
Chez-nous, là-bas! (2019), by eL Seed.
Marco Pavan
Kachachi (2015), by Hayv Kahraman.
FOR-SITE Foundation with the support of ALRUG
Mahboubeh (2018), by Olga Stefatou.
Chrysalis
21 March 2020 - 23 August 2020
Presented as a companion to Sanctuary, this portrait series celebrates the tenacious individuality of refugee women living precarious existences in Greece. For Chrysalis, artist Olga Stefatou photographed 11 women in costumes made of foil emergency blankets — created in collaboration with designer Guram Chachanidze — and asked them to reflect upon their journeys to Europe. Together, image and text give the women a platform to present themselves to the world as they wish to be seen: as individuals, each with her own reasons to have fled home, and each with her own expectations and hopes for the future.
Dakh Daughters.
Igor Gaidai
Paradise Garden: Detail of the Wagner Garden Carpet, Iran, 17th century.
Burrell Collection, CSG CIC Glasgow Museum Collections