EXHIBITION GUIDE ON VIEW: MARCH 21 – SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 BE OUR GUEST! Mention this guide for FREE admission for ONE DISPLACED Contemporary Artists Confront the Global Refugee Crisis We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. An unprecedented 70.8 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. In a world where nearly 1 person is forcibly displaced every two seconds as a result of confl ict or persecution, [our work] is more important than ever before. Source: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “Figures at a Glance,” June 18, 2019 ARTISTS & PARTICIPANTS The exhibition is accompanied by an interactive audio guide available free of charge through Guide by Cell by dialing 505.225.8535, made possible through the generosity of Courtney Finch Taylor. Harriet Bart USA & Yu-Wen Wu Taiwan/USA Candice Breitz South Africa Reena Saini Kallat India Hew Locke UK/Guyana Cannupa Hanska Luger USA Guadalupe Maravilla El Salvador/USA Richard Mosse Ireland The Refugee Nation represented by Moutaz Arian Syria / Yara Said Syria UNITED for Intercultural Action’s List of Deaths And featuring Human Flow (2017), directed by Ai Weiwei With Hostile Terrain 94, a collaboration between SITE Santa Fe, the School for Advanced Research, and the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe Displaced is organized by SITE Santa Fe and co-curated by Reena Saini Kallat, Woven Chronicle (detail), 2015, Irene Hofmann installed at the Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite, Vancouver, Canada, 2015. Photo: Rachel Topham SITE’s Phillips Director & Chief Curator COVER: The Refugee Nation fl ag, designed by Yara Brandee Caoba Said, 2015. Image courtesy of The Refugee Nation Assistant Curator OPPOSITE: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Future Ancestral Technologies: We Survive You, 2019–20, showing Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure (TIPI). Photo: Dylan McLaughlin ARTISTS & PARTICIPANTS DISPLACED Through works created in a range of points. Ranging in tone from the poetic to the NOTE ON LANGUAGE media by artists from around the globe, visceral, the works in the exhibition help us Words like refugee, asylum seeker, migrant, and Displaced foregrounds forgotten histories, gain a more informed understanding of this immigrant are sometimes used interchangeably, asks us to confront the highest levels troubling moment in human history and a which sows confusion and spreads mistaken of human displacement on record, and sense of how it is experienced by the refugee, assumptions. Worse, the word illegal is still imagines a future where migration is the immigrant, and the asylum seeker. applied to people, despite its profound essential for survival. Displaced poses The crisis is vast. Nearly every day brings dehumanization. Given the complexity of critical questions around the global crisis word of new and tragic human suff ering. language, we off er the following defi nitions of human displacement and illuminates the The infl ux of information and images is of relevant terms, which have informed our complexities surrounding the urgent social, overwhelming�it can make us tune out or, own discussions. political, and environmental issues that worse, become indiff erent. Encountering frame the circumstances of the moment. diffi cult subject matter like this, we are Asylum seeker According to a recent report issued by the reminded that contemporary artists are A person asking for protection in another United Nations Refugee Agency, a record some of our most powerful communicators, country due to persecution or safety concerns 70.8 million men, women, and children fl ed able to open hearts and minds to new ways in their native country. Their claim not yet having been defi nitively evaluated, they may be their homes across the world last year due of thinking and acting. Displaced not only considered a refugee or a migrant. to war, violence, and persecution. At a time considers the history and present reality when we are witnessing the highest levels of human migration through the lens of Displaced person of human displacement around the globe, art, it also suggests what might lead to a A person who has been expelled, deported, or impelled to fl ee from their native country by Displaced features a remarkable group of changed future. the forces or consequences of war, oppression, artists and activists who address how the crisis As you experience the exhibition, you or natural disaster, including the eff ects of is impacting our world, our borders, and climate change. A displaced person is often also will encounter the works of artists from our communities. referred to as a refugee. two generations: some are immigrants Amid current tensions surrounding border themselves, others have directly observed Immigrant security and the ongoing forced migration of the movement of refugees, and still others A person who has emigrated from their native country and arrived in a foreign country to take people, Displaced looks at this complex issue report the persistence of such upheavals up permanent residence. from many perspectives and cultural vantage throughout history. Together these works and these artists assert that forced migration has Migrant been part of human existence forever, while A person who moves from one country to bringing into sharp focus the escalating scale another, often in order to fi nd work or improved living conditions. and severity of the human crisis we are now witnessing around the globe. Refugee In addition to the artworks in the exhibition, A person who has been forced to leave their native country in order to escape war, Displaced features several projects associated persecution, or natural disaster. with research and advocacy eff orts that stress the gravity of the situation. At the Undocumented immigrant core of projects such as the List of Deaths A person residing somewhere other than their native country without authorization. The term and Hostile Terrain 94 are statistics related refers to people who have entered a country to migrant deaths in Europe and at the US/ without governmental permission as well as Mexico border respectively. Using this data, those who have entered with a legal visa that is artists have infused the neutrality of statistics no longer valid. with the passion of activism to respond to the horrifi c toll of the policies, circumstances, and forces that have led to this moment. 4 ARTISTS & PARTICIPANTS Harriet Bart (b. 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.A.; lives in Minneapolis) & Yu-Wen Wu (b. 1958 in Taipei, Taiwan; lives in Boston, U.S.A.) Harriet Bart and Yu-Wen Wu have been working Bart and Wu have written: “Leavings/Belongings together on projects related to migration since looks to the future as do the refugees and 2015. Their collaboration began at the height of immigrants who find their way here. We know the Syrian refugee crisis, when they discovered they carry few possessions. We know from their shared concern for the women and children listening to and recording scores of stories, they forced to flee their homes with little more than carry hopes and dreams for a better future for the clothing on their backs. Leavings/Belongings their children and for themselves. They are (2016–ongoing) is a multifaceted project in which resourceful. They are resilient.” 1 they give voice to such immigrants. 1. Untitled text, Yu-Wen Wu website, http://www.yuwenwu.com/leavingsbelongings-collaboration. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, approximately 51 percent of refugees worldwide are women and SITE Santa Fe and the artists wish to thank the Refugee children. Abduction, sexual abuse, harassment, Well-being Project at the University of New Mexico and exploitation are just some of the dangers they and the Santa Fe Public Schools Adelante Program for face. It is estimated that more than 30 million their collaboration on this project. They introduced us to the many incredible immigrant and refugee women children are among the displaced. The brightly living in our communities who have contributed their colored cloth bundles of Leavings/Belongings creativity and their stories. The installation of Leavings/ commemorate the hardships endured by women Belongings at SITE is dedicated to them. and children as they flee war and famine and face the challenges of relocating in a new, and not necessarily welcoming, country. Created in collaboration with women who have resettled their families in the United States, these bundles represent all that they have left behind (homes, families, and possessions) and the little that they carried with them. The fabric was collected or donated from countries around the world. As the women completed the bundles in intimate workshops around the country—including several in New Mexico—they were invited to write a story or message on their bundle. Many wrote of their hope to encounter peace and kindness in their new lives. Now numbering over one thousand, the bundles have been brought together here for the first time. They are accompanied by portraits of the women who volunteered to be photographed with their bundles, and their stories as recorded in the video Tell Me (2020). OPPOSITE: Harriet Bart and Yu-Wen Wu, Leavings/Belongings, 2016–ongoing, installed at SITE Santa Fe, 2020. Photo: Kim Richardson ABOVE: Harriet Bart and Yu-Wen Wu, Leavings/Belongings (detail), 2016-ongoing. Photo: Yu-Wen Wu 7 ARTISTS & PARTICIPANTS Candice Breitz (b. 1972 in Johannesburg, South Africa; lives in Berlin, Germany) Candice Breitz creates video installations that In the first room of the installation, excerpts explore celebrity culture, stereotypes, and media tropes. She often uses found video, appropriating from the six interviews are performed by footage from film and television to address our Hollywood actors Alec Baldwin and Julianne highly mediated culture. Recently, Breitz’s work has focused on the conditions that generate em- Moore in a fast-paced montage.