The Immigrants
Experiment 2. Venice.
May 30–July 15, 2013
Press preview: May 30th, 11am
Opening: May 30th, 6pm
Giudecca 800/r
30133 Venice
Italy
Featured artists:
Alighiero Boetti / Igor Eškinja / Franklin Evans / Jacob Hashimoto / Radhika Khimji / Gianni Pettena / Luca Pozzi / Giovanni Rizzoli / Richard Prince / Santiago Sierra / Traslochi Emotivi
Very few words have the representative power and the semantic density of the word immigrant.
The artistic project The Immigrants, created by Federico Luger, takes this word as a point of departure, it starts exactly in this universe of sense that in a few letters delimitates a territory—as a frontier—and at the same time, it suggests a world-other, like a dream.
The title The Immigrants contains in a few words the invitation to a journey, to imagine a future, the promise of an imagined or imaginary land, the occasion to leave behind the socio-political borders and, may be, the invitation to wear a different mental habitus.
As every journey, also The Immigrants is a project-in-progress, moved by determination and cleverness to search and build an alternative to already saturated spaces; or simply, the invitation to project a future yet to be designed, without moving from one’s own environment, in a play of abandonment and reconquest, of trust and dream.
In this experiment, a group show brings together artists belonging to different generations and nationalities at the Giudecca island, a historic and popular neighbourhood in Venice, creating a sort of terminal, an exchange station in which diverse experiences and visions intertwine, exactly as it happened in harbours over the centuries.
The intention of this experiment is, in fact, to re-read the concepts of border, frontier and belonging. It is not by chance that The Immigrants has as privileged frame the Giudecca island and as hosting space a former distillery, next to Mariano Fortuny’s historical workshop. Skimmed by the lagoon, the Giudecca island represents an exceptional observatory to have a kaleidoscopic gaze on the reality of the journey, detached, analytic and dreamy at the same time.
This project has been realized in collaboration with Ghostart, Le Case d’Arte, prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Studio La Città, and Federico Luger Gallery.
Press contact:
Federico Luger
Via Circo, 1, 20123 Milano
T 39 02 673 913 41 / info [at] federicoluger.com / www.federicoluger.com