Made Visible

I n the United StateS and throughout the world, migration is a newly urgent issue—more people are displaced today than has ever been recorded. Yet migration has also shaped and reshaped the world for as long as humans have lived. A new Harvard Art Museums exhibition, spanning media,

places, and times, explores these two dimensions of human move-ment, and the space in between. Its images and objects—of people, but also of landscapes, things left behind, ghostly traces—present a vision of migration that, however contested today, is central to world history. Walking through the gallery, one is confronted with the sense that migration is not a special or marginal part of the hu-man experience. It is a constant, pervasive consequence of human conflict and disaster—a reflection of the will to survive, and hu-mans’ capacity to make their world anew.

“Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art,” which runs through January 5, begins with a passport. Walk up closer to it, and it becomes clear the passport is a fabrication, a Spanglish document created by Puerto Rican art-ist Adál Maldonado for his imaginary country, El Spirit Republic of Puerto Rico. “The longer you look at it, the more it breaks up your sense of what is real,” says Mary Schneider Enriquez, a curator of modern and contemporary art. Puzzling over the document, the components of a passport appear surreal, silly. In place of the nation-

al seal usually found on passports is a domino: a trick, a roll of the dice that determines who leaves and stays, and, of-ten, who lives and dies.

The symbolism of passports echoes the exhibition’s larger interest in borders—such a focal, contested part of today’s discourse on migration. What are borders, and what do they mean? They don’t merely come into exis-tence: they are constructed, and reflect choices about how to carve up places and landscapes. A large back wall of the exhibit displays images of the southern and northern U.S. borders. An oversized pho-tograph of a Border Patrol target practice range in Texas, by Rich-ard Misrach, is unforgettable, with nine human-shaped decoys shot through with bullets, and the foreground littered with gun casings. In a photo of the U.S.-Canadian boundary by Bill McDowell, taken from the dashboard of a car, the border barely exists. “You can just roll up in your car,” says co-curator Makeda Best, who leads the mu-seums’ photography curation. “There’s no line; it’s not militarized.” The photo looks like it could have been taken on anyone’s smart-phone. The southern and northern border photos, Best explains, each enact a kind of looking: the “militarized gaze” of the Border Patrol,

Made VisibleThe ubiquity of movement across man-made borders

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Above: Adál Maldonado’s The Passport, 1995, from the series The Spirit Republic of Puerto Rico.Opposite: Richard Misrach’s “Border Patrol Target Range, Near Gulf of Mexico, Texas,” 2013. Bill McDowell’s “Untitled (approaching the border, Roxham Road),” 2018, from the series Almost Canada

TR

AN

SF

ER

FR

OM

TH

E D

AV

ID R

OC

KE

FE

LL

ER

CE

NT

ER

FO

R L

AT

IN A

ME

RIC

AN

ST

UD

IES

, H

AR

VA

RD

UN

IVE

RS

ITY

, GIF

T O

F T

HE

AR

TIS

T, 2

012

.17

8. ©

AD

ÁL

A l l i m a g e s c o u r t e s y o f H a r v a r d A r t M u s e u m s / F o g g M u s e u m42 November - December 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

GIF

T O

F T

HE

AR

TIS

T, 2

018

.112

. © R

ICH

AR

D M

ISR

AC

H; I

MA

GE

CO

UR

TE

SY

OF

TH

E A

RT

IST

AN

D F

RA

EN

KE

L G

AL

LE

RY

, SA

N F

RA

NC

ISC

O.

FU

ND

FO

R T

HE

AC

QU

ISIT

ION

OF

PH

OT

OG

RA

PH

S, 2

019

.82

. © B

ILL

MC

DO

WE

LL

; CO

UR

TE

SY

OF

TH

E A

RT

IST.


and the perspective of someone driving up to Canada, from the safety of their car.

“Crossing Lines” is only the most recent contribution to Har-vard’s campus-wide conversation on migration and displacement. This summer, the Harvard Global Health Institute hosted a panel on the emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, where lawyers and public-health professionals reported that children and families were being abused and irrevocably harmed by the current administration’s poli-cies toward immigrants. In April, Masha Gessen’s distinguished Tanner Lectures on Human Values invited listeners to question what it even means to restrict human movement—a question that resounds alongside an exhibition photo that shows the southern border as a vast, empty desert landscape, cut in half by a rusty barrier.

Most of the works in the “Crossing Lines” are new acquisitions commissioned by Enriquez and Best. These contemporary pieces, Best says, reflect how photographers today think about their work: not merely documenting some fixed version of reality, but also as participants who shape the way their subjects are looked at. An-other piece by Bill McDowell, a photo of the fragments of an asy-lum seeker’s testimony found at the U.S.-Canadian border, reveals incomplete glimpses of who this person was: a refugee forced to leave Nigeria because of sexual orientation. Says Best, “These slower methods of working speak to how contemporary photographers are interested in a slower process and layered process that recog-nizes their own position as producers—and not just the idea that photography can offer some sort of evidence.”

Photography may have moved beyond a “view from nowhere” idea

of objectivity, but the images chosen for the exhibit still serve a documentary role, with the ability to reveal and surprise. Beside well-known symbols of migration—pass-ports, the southern border—are others that visitors may never have heard of, or may not have registered as a type of migration. A 2008 photograph by Jim Goldberg shows a family living at a waste-management facility on the out-skirts of Hyderabad; rising temperatures have forced fam-ilies like these to abandon their farms, a reminder that the climate crisis is now reality. Another photo from Bill McDowell’s “Almost Canada” series shows the open en-

trance to a narrow Underground Railroad tunnel, inviting viewers to imagine climbing inside—another kind of migration.

The flip side of boundaries and borders—the coercion and control exercised over movement—is the idea that migration gives rise to new cultures that are always remaking the world. “Crossing Lines” considers these “hybrid spaces, identities, languages, and beliefs,” from the perspective of an individual’s psychology as well as from that of the greater culture. A woodcut print by Indian artist Zarina shows 36 abstract, geometric representations that bring to mind parts of homes she has lived in—a door, the night sky—with Urdu and English inscriptions under each. After the partition of India, Zarina’s family and millions of others were displaced and became refugees in their own countries. Her work, titled Home Is a Foreign Place, reflects the idea that returning home means going to a place that is not hers.

Zarina’s work is an evocative mediation on how immigrants see themselves—but what about when they are looked at, seen from the outside by their host culture? A large slide show displays a set of 80 photos by Candida Höfer of Turkish families in Germany in the

Above, left to right: Jim Goldberg, “Home, Hyderabad, India,” 2008, printed 2019. Lili Almog, “Muslim Girl #14,” from the series The Other Half of the Sky, 2009. Images from this series focus on women belonging to ethnic and religious minorities in China, like female imams and Muslim leaders who lead women-only mosques. Facing page: Zarina, Home Is a Foreign Place, 1999 (complete work), and two details, Rain (above) and Sky. Serena Chopra, “Kalsana Dorjee” (right) and “Karma Tsetan,” from the series Majnu Ka Tilla Diaries, 2009, printed 2016. Chopra’s series documents the lives of Tibetan exiles in the colony of Majnu Ka Tilla, in New Delhi. The community was established in the 1950s, yet these images reflect its still marginal status.

AB

OV

E L

EF

T: F

RA

NC

IS H

. BU

RR

ME

MO

RIA

L F

UN

D, 2

019

.10

4. ©

JIM

GO

LD

BE

RG

; CO

UR

TE

SY

PA

CE

/MA

CG

ILL

GA

LL

ER

Y, N

EW

YO

RK

. AB

OV

E R

IGH

T: F

UN

D F

OR

TH

E

AC

QU

ISIT

ION

OF

PH

OT

OG

RA

PH

S, 2

019

.80

. © L

ILI A

LM

OG

; CO

UR

TE

SY

OF

TH

E A

RT

IST.

44 November - December 2019


These contemporary pieces reflect how photographers today think of their work: not merely documenting some fixed version of reality, but also as participants who shape the way their subjects are looked at.

MA

RG

AR

ET

FIS

HE

R F

UN

D, 2

018

.30

9. ©

ZA

RIN

A H

AS

HM

IR

ICH

AR

D A

ND

RO

NA

Y M

EN

SC

HE

L F

UN

D F

OR

TH

E A

CQ

UIS

ITIO

N O

F P

HO

TO

GR

AP

HS

, 201

8.2

58

AN

D 2

018

.25

9. ©

SE

RE

NA

CH

OP

RA

CO

UR

TE

SY

SE

PIA

EY

E.


1970s. The immigrants are captured in intimate portraits in their homes, and in candid shots on streets and in shops and public parks. “Turks in Germany” was taken while the coun-try was ending its postwar foreign-labor program, but, as an exhibit label explains, this series “contra-dicted the then-widespread notion that ‘guest workers’ were tempo-rary. By the mid-1970s, Turks were the largest immigrant population in the country and, as Muslims, the least accepted.” Höfer’s series represent-ed the immigrants in a German visual discourse “from which they remained otherwise conspicuously absent,” a label explains. These new Germans, the photos seem to announce, were here to stay.

The final works that visitors see in “Crossing Lines” are a set of six pho-tos taken by Dylan Vitone in 2001, representing working-class residents of historically Irish South Boston; and REMAINS, a film by Irish artist Wil-lie Doherty describing his and his son’s kneecapping during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Playing on a loop in a black box offset

from the gallery space, REMAINS is an immersive, eerie experience. Enriquez felt it was essential for the muse-ums to represent the importance of Irish immigration for Boston, and the enduring consequences of conflict about identity and sovereignty in Ireland. The sub-jects of Vitone’s black-and-white portraits, like those of “Turks in Germany,” stare straight into the camera,

announcing their place in their homes and communities: a reminder that migration, past and present, is all around us.

Above: Graciela Iturbide, “Teno-sique, Mexico,” 2015. At a shelter in Tenosique, near the border with Guatemala, a man stands by a mural marking violent attacks against migrants. Right: Emily Jacir, La mia Roma (omaggio ai sampietrini), 2016 (complete work above; detail below). White casts of cobblestones taken from the streets of Rome evoke the movement of migrants. They also double as symbols of protest: cobblestones torn from the street were used as weapons by working-class Europeans during times of unrest. Gilles Peress, “Bus depot. Qom,” 1979, from the series Iran. A bus dominates this photo, taken during the Iranian Revolution, while the people nearby seem to be making their decision: will they stay or leave? Opposite: Eugenio Dittborn, 2nd History of the Human Face (Socket of the Eyes), Airmail Painting No. 66, 1989. These “airmail paintings,” showing criminal mugshots and photos of indigenous people, were printed on fabric during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, then folded up and mailed outside the country—an exploration of how art can persist and be seen under state repression. Dylan Vitone, “friday night,” 2001, printed 2019. From the series South Boston

Germany’s supposedly temporary Turkish migrants, Candida Höfer’s photos seem to announce, were here to stay.

FU

ND

FO

R T

HE

AC

QU

ISIT

ION

OF

PH

OT

OG

RA

PH

S,

201

9.8

7. ©

GR

AC

IEL

A I

TU

RB

IDE

GIF

T O

F M

R. A

ND

MR

S. J

OH

N C

OW

LE

S, B

Y E

XC

HA

NG

E, 2

019

.114

. © E

MIL

Y J

AC

IRS

CH

NE

IDE

R/E

RD

MA

N P

RIN

TE

R’S

PR

OO

F C

OL

LE

CT

ION

, PA

RT

IAL

GIF

T, A

ND

PA

RT

IAL

PU

RC

HA

SE

T

HR

OU

GH

TH

E M

AR

GA

RE

T F

ISH

ER

FU

ND

, 201

1.4

00

. © G

ILL

ES

PE

RE

SS

/MA

GN

UM

PH

OT

OS

46 November - December 2019


FU

ND

FO

R T

HE

AC

QU

ISIT

ION

OF

PH

OT

OG

RA

PH

S, 2

019

.115

. © D

YL

AN

VIT

ON

EM

AR

GA

RE

T F

ISH

ER

FU

ND

, 201

3.1

1. ©

EU

GE

NIO

DIT

TB

OR

N

SC

HN

EID

ER

/ER

DM

AN

PR

INT

ER

’S P

RO

OF

CO

LL

EC

TIO

N, P

AR

TIA

L G

IFT,

AN

D P

AR

TIA

L P

UR

CH

AS

E

TH

RO

UG

H T

HE

MA

RG

AR

ET

FIS

HE

R F

UN

D, 2

011.

40

0. ©

GIL

LE

S P

ER

ES

S/M

AG

NU

M P

HO

TO

S


Documents

Made Visible