CrossingBorders: WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS at Westbeth Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday October 25th, 6-8pm
Exhibition Hours: Wednesday – Sunday
1-6pm and by appointment

CrossingBorders: WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS
An exhibition of works by members of Global Art Project, an international multimedia collaborative collective with over 90 members operating in 19 different countries.

Exhibition concept: 
The Borders are wide, various, concrete and philosophical, offering an illusion of safety and definitive organization of reality buttressed by or colliding with the shifts in perception, power alignments, cultural imperatives and agendas at play at any given moment both on the international and the personal, subjective stage.

Borders as a theme not defined, but implied. The obvious way to look at Borders is as it relates to geographic demarcation and via socio-political implications, however, the artists in this exhibition take it one step further examining Borders that confound and limit us personally; Borders to be psychologically challenged, broken through and/or accepted.

CrossingBorders: WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS poses the question, “Where can we find a safe haven?”
With immigration looming large as a hot button item politically, polarizing as well as unifying,  this exhibition will touch demonstrate the many ways artists create works that deal with this question. From the lack of compassion to international and jurisdictional walls being built, the exhibiting artists dive deeply into depictions of ethnocentric responses and unreasonable blockages to the ever present desperation of immigrants trying to find a home/country they can feel safe in when they do not feel safe in their own.

In photographs, paintings, monumental sculptures, installations and performance CrossingBorders offers insight into concerns ranging from gender transformation, the Atlantic slave trade, the DNA of consolodation as well as the immigrant at the border, on the shore welcomed or washed out. 

The Westbeth exhibition is curated by artist Carl Heyward and GAP founding member Akiko Suzuki. 

*CrossingBorders travels to Nine Eighteen Nine Studio Gallery in Charlotte, NC with  artist Mikel Frank and VAPA co-founder and director of the gallery Joanne Rogers joining the curatorial team November 16, 2024 -January 4th, 2025.*

“What Borders are you willing to cross?”