Who Are We? exhibition @ Tate Exchange, London
‘Outside The Box’ takes real acts of kindness and turns them into artistic statements.
I went to the Who Are We? exhibition at Tate Exchange the other day. It’s a participatory exhibition ‘reflecting on identity, belonging, migration and citizenship through arts and audience participation’. If you get a chance to see it before it closes on 19th March (or any of its exhibits as they tour the country/world) I’d recommend it.
As a theme that invites so much polarised discussion, it’s really refreshing to look at issues of national identity & migration in more humanising contexts. One of my favourite pieces was Outside The Box, in which artist Laura Srovala crowdsources acts of kindness and solidarity which she turns into stories on cardboard boxes that are stacked on top of each other.
To read a whole story, you need to pick up a box and turn it around, or make the decision to walk around it. The boxes become beautifully-illustrated comic strips of compassion set against a backdrop of unrest and conflict.
From a personal point of view I initially responded to the fact that the illustrations reminded me a bit of Tintin, which I loved as a kid.
I also like the fact that you need to make an effort to get the whole experience — it’s more engaging than if the stories were on canvases hung on a wall.
And the knowledge that the experiences have been sent in to the artist by real people makes the exhibit feel relevant to your own world.
Other Who Are We? exhibits do a similarly innovative job of representing the plights of people in a very real way. For example, being presented with the logistics of just one family’s attempt to traverse Europe with no resources means you form an improved understanding of the aggregated challenge faced by millions.
Curated by Counterpoint Arts alongside the Open University, the University of Warwick and Loughborough University, Who Are We? is an inspiring, stimulating and touching response to a defining conversation facing Britain and the world.
