Exhibition
Nomadic Settlers – Settled Nomads
Concept for a group exhibition
for a German version of the concept, please click here
Intro
Ever since, man had the urge to wander, to travel, to glance beyond his familiar horizon. Literature and art are full of works thematizing this human desire for foreign places. Yet, at least as manifold are the works dealing with the opposite subject: the human need for a home, a fixed, intimate centre of life where one can settle down and find shelter and security. Being settled and nomadic wandering, the desire for foreign places and the desire for a home are two sides of man that seem to contradict each other, but still cannot be separated from each other.
Almost paradigmatically in thematizing this paradox is Romanticism in which both human desires became central motives. Many paintings and texts focused wandering and going out into the world; an example is Caspar David Friedrichs’ “Kreidefelsen auf Rügen / Chalk Cliffs on Rügen Island” (1818): three figures, standing with their backs to the viewer, looking out over the far sea. At the same time, the late 18th and early 19th centuries are politically disturbed, thus the need for a real home, the search for the original core of the world as the home of all people is a central motif of Romanticism (example: poem by J. v. Eichendorff, Mondnacht / Moon Night, 1837).
Es war, als hätt der Himmel / Die Erde still geküßt, / Daß sie im Blütenschimmer / Von ihm nun träumen müsst. / [... ] / Und meine Seele spannte / Weit ihre Flügel aus, / Flog durch die stillen Lande, / Als flöge sie nach Haus.
It was, as if the sky had / quietly kissed earth, / thus she in flowers’ shimmer / of him now must dream./ [...] and my soul spanned / her wings wide, / flew through the calm lands, / as if it flew home.
Nomadic Settlers vs. Settled Nomads: HOME
What is home? Where is home?
Is home the place of birth or the place of residence? The village, the city, the country, the continent where you live? Or is the spatial home not just one facet of a very complex phenomenon that is familiar to everybody, which one, however, only seldom thinks about consciously? Does not the social home, friends, family, traditions play at least a similar role?
Once you start to think about the question about “home” – apparently sounding simple at first –, there are numerous, subjective answers possible.
Having developed a settled way of life in the course of time, the major part of Europeans, e. g., most certainly would localise home as a spatial retreat in some way. A nomadic people, however, would find different answers: the whole world is home wherein you live with your group of people. Home gets a temporal connotation.
The connection to a geographical home rises strong emotions, such as love, pride, patriotism, which have been propagated in a big campaign “Du bist Deutschland / You are Germany” previous to the Football World Cup 2006. These emotions are denied to nomads, not having a special localizable home.
Yet the sense of home can change and degenerate: The (too) strong fixation on home gives rise to an excessive need of protection one’s home. Then foreigners are intruders which have to be held off and one has to defend against “enemies and threats”. Home can cause discrimination, xenophobia and racism.
The nomadic way of living usually is approached with sceptisim, but is wandering around really that foreign to today’s sedentary settlers? Travelling, relocation, commuting between abode and work – don’t they also live certain forms of nomadism?
Nomadic Settlers? Settled Nomads?
Nomadic Settlers vs. Settled Nomads: WANDERING / MIGRATION
By travelling and meeting different places, countries and cultures, one’s understanding of the others rises. Moving geographically out of the habitual limits of home is accompanied by spiritual delimitation. Mutual acceptance and understanding grow. Not for nothing there is a figure of speech “Reisen bildet / Travelling educates”. At once travelling also offers the chance to recognize and value one’s own home. “Only when being abroad, we learn what home means to us” (Theodor Fontane).
Historical
Migration of both people and individuals is as old as mankind. The period of Migration (German terminus is “Völkerwanderung” / literally: peoples’ wandering/migration) as an transition period from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages has become an established term. But as these movements of resettlement have often been accompanied by wars, destruction and material loss, the term “Migration Period” is usually associated with negative connotations.
By doing so, one ignores the facts that the migration of peoples, individuals and groups has contributed considerably to the distribution of technical knowledge and culture. How else knowledge would have spread? Exemplary are the medieval stone masons’ lodges whose masters and craftsmen moved from one construction site to another. Otherwise gothic style would not have expanded so successfully all over Europe within that short a time.
During all times, it has been especially the artists who have resided on a particular home for a finite period – which they left to follow the call of a new client, like Leonardo da Vinci went to the French court, or Peter Paul Rubens, who worked as a diplomat and artist in Spain, France and England. Often artists also moved on their own accord, like the major part of artists of early Modernism, Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst or Joan Miró, who were drawn to the metropolis of arts of their days, to Paris.
Today
Today, nomadism still determines global everday life. Chinese migrant workers are travelling from one megalomaniac construction project to the next one, just to work for a starvation wage and under perilous terms on often unsecured construction sites. In Dubai, Near Eastern low-wagers work on menial jobs, they live in barracks with miserable sanitary facilities outside the city and are transported to their workplaces every day. Once somebody loses his job, he has to leave the country within 30 days.
But even in Germany, migrant labor is a burning issue (again) – there even exists a German neologism: Jobnomadismus / job nomadism. Job nomads are forced to travel after work and money. They leave their families, their social life, their intimate surroundings. Not always does this happen voluntarily.
Nomadic Settlers? Settled Nomads?
Exhibition: Nomadic Settlers – Settled Nomads
The group exhibition Nomadic Settlers – Settled Nomads is part of an exhibit triptych dealing with the complex theme of the human sense of home and its manifold facets. Part 1 already took take place in autumn 2008: This world is not my home in Berlin, part 2 Consciences and Frontiers is to come soon.
The temporal and local difference offers the opportunity of a scene change which enables new perspectives on the subject. Thus, raised questions can be picked up again, and be thought about anew. Invited are young international artists, some of whom have already participated in the first parts, some of whom are newly taken on board. While the first group of artists can develop their approach to the subject, the new artists contribute new impulses and perspectives. A process of communication between artists and art works, between own and foreign, old and new starts in which the visitors of the exhibition actively take part.
Artists
Six international artists are invited to deal with this paradoxical trait of man, with his longing for foreign places and his desire of home. They approach questions this complex topic poses – global problems, the situation in their own country, their personal way of living, … – and with the means of art, they formulate their individual perspectives, their personal comment.
The aim is not to find answers, but to pose questions, to make aware of problems, to cause consideration.
The invited artists of different nationalities are living and working all over the world. They work with several mediums: photography, painting, installation, performance, sculpture. The visitors of the exhibition will have the chance to get to know innovative young artists and to gain manifold insight in an exciting and still burning subject through the art works.
Curators
The team of 2 young curators Simone Kraft and Bonaventure S. B. Ndikung have cooperated with young and innovative artists from all over the world. Both of them also personify the Nomadic Settlers – Settled Nomads themselves, as their CVs have led them to several places worldwide to study and work there.
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Artists invited:
(To find out more about each artist’s work, please click on the names or use Artists Page)
Microclimax (FRA)…………………………………….[Installation / Architecture]
Julio Bittencourt (BRA)…………………….………..[Photography]
Joris Vanpoucke (BEL)…………………….………..[Painting / Illustration]
Inês d’Orey (POR)……………………………………[Photography]
Bonaventure S. B. Ndikung (CAM)………………..[Painting]
