Bordered Lives

Bordered Lives
Exhibition
03–11 September 2021
Opening hours: by appointment (Please email to to khadija@kdja.org)
—
Soft opening: 03 September, 17:00-21:00
Workshop: 05 September, 18:00-20:00
Book Launch: 10 September, 18:00-20:00

Ludovica Fales, Emma Humphris, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

As borders extend by far beyond the border experience, the exhibition Bordered Lives by artists Khadija von Zinnenburg Carrol, Ludovica Fales and Emma Humphris offers a glimpse inside custodial institutions, which have been increasingly used throughout the world to deter irregular migration, and carcerality beyond detention used as a tactic for governmentality. As the current health crisis has made clear, people within these kinds of places are particularly vulnerable. Yet, too often, their stories and experiences remain hidden from sight. Launched and exhibited for the first time here, Bordered Lives (published by Sternberg Press, 2020) features testimonies as well as drawings and art projects devised by detainees.The work offers an opportunity to reflect on the conditions under which art is supposed to be produced in institutional spaces, as well as the effects of indeterminate detention, bureaucratic indifference and banality, on the subjectivity of the incarcerated. The gallery exposes some parts of the Immigratin Detention archive collected in workshops with detainees awaiting deportation and revisit those experiences in the light of the ever-changing nature of borders today. The exhibition includes letters, writings, poems, recorded performances, drawings, objects, videos, audio pieces which build an immersive tapestry of images and experiences exposing the contradicting nature of borders, the violence inscribed within detention centers and camps, as well as the forms of resistance that exist within those spaces. Reflecting on collaborative artistic research, publications and performances with the immigration detention archive, we will use the gallery to revisit the experience of borders, its slow violence and potential transformation.

Events:
Workshop
05 September, 18:00-20:00
Ludovica Fales (artist and Lecturer of Experimental Film, University College London) conducts a performative reading workshop on “Border as a Method, or the Multiplication of Labour” by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Nielson
(Registration to ludovica.fales@gmail.com)

Book Launch
10 September, 18:00-20:00
Mary Bosworth (Law Faculty, Oxford University) in conversation with Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (artist and Prof. of Global Art, University of Birmingham)