ART EXHIBITION: Migration Now!

October 20th -21st, 2012
Back Room, Le Cagibi, 5490 Saint Laurent Boulevard

Presented by co-organizer of Migration Now! Favianna Rodriguez and No One Is Illegal-Montreal.

We want to re-imagine migration as an inevitability, as a social practice that is not to be prevented but to be related to, like weather. All migration starts with social relationships. When people move, they are going either towards their families or communities, or more often, away from them. They move to help their relatives, or support them by leaving. People migrate because their homes stifle them, because those homes become burdens they need to shed in order to have full lives. They move in search of opportunity, or to escape their past, or to simply survive. They move because of lies they are told and that they come to believe, and they move to fulfill the most beautiful and fragile of dreams. Migration is fundamentally about our right to move freely across planet Earth, in search of our fullest and best selves.
Art and culture are the realm of ideas, images, and stories; it is where people make sense of the world, where they find meaning and forge community. History shows that when the culture changes, politics follows. Art has a crucial role to play in transforming, redefining, and reimagining the global phenomenon of migration. When it comes to migration, the discourse rarely focuses on the stories of real people trying to succeed; instead, the frame is dominated by criminality and punishment. We believe that when we share our images and tell our stories, we illustrate the human struggle and win over broad audiences. Art drives ideas home in a way that is unmatched by any other medium- movements soaked in art can bloom, grow more powerful, and establish deeper roots. Many of the artists involved in the Migration Now portfolio are students of the great traditions of political printmaking, such as Mexico’s Taller de Grafica Popular and the inflammatory street graphics of revolutionary France in 1968 – graphic traditions which inform the works included here.
For more information go to migrationnow.com