The exhibition DIS-PLACED II presents works by fourteen international artists, focusing on the notion of losing a sense of “home”.
The concept of home is often associated with an architectural, territorial, or environmental figure, and with affects of security, comfort, and familiarity. Yet every day, many people and groups are forced to leave their place of residence, their community, or their country due to oppressive or otherwise coercive circumstances. Armed conflict, violence, natural disasters, and economic crises; or societal, religious, or familial constraints— so many factors that can render a place of origin unliveable, or imperil the lives and flourishing of individuals, driving them into exile.
The notion of losing one’s “home” does not necessarily entail migration. Giving up certain kinds of belief, or the nostalgia for a lost heritage or for a bygone era, can likewise foster the feeling that identity, or the sense of belonging to a community or to a place, are being lost.
Coming from Germany, Argentina, South Africa, Cuba, France, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, and Luxembourg, these artists approach the concept of “home” and the extent of its loss via autobiographical narrative, collected testimony, or imagined storylines.
Between reality and fiction, the lived and the interpreted, the personal and the collective, these works evoke injustice, persecution, abandonment, flight. Some of the stories touch on questions of memory, hope, and reunion.
Part of the Biennale 2024 – “Architectures”, hosted by Esch Capitale Culturelle.
Video: SKIN.