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From March 7th to May 30th, 2017, New York University Shanghai Art Gallery is proud to present “Borders: Us and Them,” an exhibition that probes the emergence and transformation of contemporary global borders, and their socio-political implications.

Taking its title from an eponymous song by English progressive rock band, Pink Floyd, the exhibition taps into the separations, discriminations, armed conflicts, and dehumanizing forces bred into existence by borders. The first ever group exhibition at this gallery, “Borders: Us and Them” extends its field of vision beyond the confines of Shanghai and China, drawing together five international artists from three different continents—Rasmus Degnbol (Denmark), John Craig Freeman (US), Lorenzo Pezzani (Italy) & Charles Heller (Switzerland), as well as Reena Saini Kallat ()—to examine the existential conditions of living between borders in a world increasingly marked by rising nationalism and populism, crumbling democratic values, and sweeping backlash against globalization; and how artists—as critical agents—can alter bordered reality through their practice.

These five artists that make up this exhibition share a devoted concern of the negative impacts of geopolitical borders that have haunted both the past, and present. Crease/ Crevice/ Contour (2008), by Reena Saini Kallat, consists of ten photographs. Kallat retraces the evolving L.O.C. (Line of Control) between India and Pakistan from October 1947 to December 1948, on the back of a female body, documenting its movement by camera. This collection of images connotates the armed conflicts between these two newly independent nations over the region of Kashmir at the time. Her deliberate gesture of inscribing on the female body provocatively exposes us to its continued vulnerability, while as the same time, portraying the branding of territorial claim.

In Border Memorial: Frontera de los Muertos (2016), American public artist John Craig Freeman boldly applies virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to a documentary video shot in Southern Arizona, early 2016. This results in a visual effect of life-sized, three dimensional geometric models of a skeleton effigy, or calcaca, floating off into the sky on the US-Mexico border. Calcaca, an archaic Aztec imagery, is here invoked by the artist in commemoration to the thousands of migrant workers who have died along the U.S./Mexico border since the 1990s, in the attempt to cross the desert southwest in search of work and a better life. Freeman resurrects their souls, allowing them to float freely above this border in the virtual, public site. A memorial to those passed, his work also amounts to a vehement critique of American values on the other side of the border, built upon an economy sustained by these very migrant workers.

The collaborative work of filmmaker Charles Heller and architect Lorenzo Pezzani has a long- standing focus on the politics of migration at the borders of Europe. Presented in this exhibition are the pieces Liquid Traces—the Left-to-Die Boat Case (2014) and Death by Rescue (2016), two experimental video creations that critically investigate a couple of episodes of mass refugee deaths and their connections to the militarized border regime in the Mediterranean Sea. By combining testimonies of human rights violations with digital technologies such as satellite imagery, vessel tracking data, geo-spatial mapping and drift modelling, Heller and Pezzani actively support the quest for the justice of migrants and their families, while exploring new ways of documenting human rights violations in the age of surveillance on an aesthetic plane.

In early summer, 2015, Danish artist Rasmus Degnbol began working on a series of photographs which later grew into Europe’s New Borders (2016). Employing a controversial technology developed by the military, the drone, Degnbol tracked mushrooming new borders across the European continent. The evolving frames in the slideshow evokes a sense of scale for the dehumanized border crisis unfolding in Europe over the last two years.

From blood-stained lessons along historical borders, soaring migrant diasporas and militarized border regime in today’s Europe, to forthcoming fences and barbed wire, “Borders: Us and Them” lays out chilling images and documentation as evidence of the rising ethical crises across the globe wrought by the politics of borders. As an academic institution devoted to preserving and maintaining the educational import of art, New York University Shanghai Art Gallery hopes to spur among NYU-Shanghai students, as well as the public, a devout engagement with the issue at hand, and together critically examine the arbitrary border between “us” and “them” in the hope of redeeming a loss of our collective empathy.

About the artists

Rasmus Degnbol, Danish, (b. 1983)

Rasmus is an award-winning visual artist and photographer based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His work often balances on the edge of whats technological possible. His work have been recognised by , New York, PDN Photo Annual, Prix de La Photographie Paris PX3, International Photo Awards (IPA), Danish POY and was the recipient of the 2016 PHMuseum Main Grant for his aerial drone work on Europe’s New Borders.

As an artist he works with his personal long-term documentary projects focusing on the political side of the human rights issues.

John Craig Freeman, American, (b. 1959)

John Craig Freeman is a public artist with over twenty-five years of experience using emergent technologies to produce large-scale public work at sites where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. With his work, Freeman seeks to expand the notion of public by exploring how digital networked technology is transforming our sense of place.

Freeman is a founding member of the international artists collective Manifest.AR and he has produced work and exhibited around the world including in London, Mexico City, Calgary, Havana, Kaliningrad, Warsaw, Zurich, Belfast, Venice, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Milano, Sydney, Singapore, Liverpool, Coimbra, Basel, Paris, across America as well as Beijing, Xi’an, Wuhan, and Hong Kong.

In 2016 he traveled to Wuhan China as part of the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator. In 2015, he was the recipient of a commission from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art + Technology program. He has also had work commissioned by rhizome.org and turbulence.org and he was awarded one of the last Individual Artist Fellowships by the NEA in 1992. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, El Pais, Liberation, Wired News, Artforum, Ten-8, Z Magazine, Afterimage, Photo Metro, New Art Examiner, Time, Harper’s and Der Spiegel. Christiane Paul cites Freeman’s work in her book Digital Art, as does Lucy Lippard in the Lure of the Local, and Margot Lovejoy in Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age. His writing has been published in Rhizomes, Leonardo, the Journal of Visual Culture, and Exposure.

Freeman received a Bachelor of Art degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1986 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990. He is currently a Professor of New Media Art at Emerson College in Boston.

Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani Swiss, (b.1981) ; Italian, (b.1982)

Charles Heller is a filmmaker and researcher, whose work has a long-standing focus on the politics of migration and aesthetic practice within and at the borders of Europe. Heller is currently conducting a postdoctoral research supported by the Swiss National Fund (SNF) at the Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, American University, Cairo and the Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Economiques, Juridiques et Sociales, Cairo.

Lorenzo Pezzani is an architect and researcher, currently convening a new MA stream in Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work deals with the spatial politics and visual cultures of migration, with a particular focus on the geography of the ocean.

Together, since 2011, they have they co-founded the WatchTheMed platform, a tool for civilian actors to exercise a critical right to look at the EU’s maritime frontier, as well as Forensic Oceanography, a collaborative project that critically investigates the militarized border regime in the Mediterranean Sea and the politics of migration in the Mediterranean Sea. The “Liquid Traces” (2014) video is based on the “Report on the Left-to- Die Boat” (2012). Their latest report “Death by Rescue” (2016) report was produced in the frame of the ESRC supported “Precarious Trajectories” project. Their collaborative work has been published and exhibited internationally.

Reena Saini Kallat, Indian, (b.1973)

Reena Saini Kallat is an artist based in whose work has been widely exhibited at institutions across the world such as the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Kennedy Centre, Washington; Vancouver Art Gallery; , London; SESC Pompeia and SESC Belenzino in Sao Paulo; Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; ZKM Karlsruhe in Germany; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; Hangar Bicocca, Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Busan MOMA; Chicago Cultural Centre amongst many others.

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