Use this LINK to register for the opening.
A Tourist In Your Own Home is an online exhibition, curated by artist, Shasha Dothan. Along with four artists Dothan invited, who are also immigrants to the United States, they created video works about their 2020 experience. This exhibition looks at each immigrant’s struggle with the notion of home. Is the new country you live in your home? Is the country you were born in your home? Being confined at home for the last few months due to Covid 19, immigrant artists may struggle even more with the questions of displacement. As executive orders are signed, that seem intended to change the lives of immigrants in the US are signed, uncertainty is a common factor in everyday life. The fears and hopes of the immigrant are in question, many not knowing what their future will look like. The questions about home and feeling like you don’t belong become more difficult.
Originally scheduled for September 2020, we have postponed the exhibit to February 2021 as a result of COVID-19.
Gallery 51 is honored to partake in this participatory art project sponsored and organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a non-profit research-art-education-media collective, directed by anthropologist Jason De León. The exhibition is composed of ~3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. These tags are geolocated on a wall map of the desert showing the exact locations where remains were found. This installation will simultaneously take place at a large number of institutions, both nationally and globally. To learn more about this project, visit their site here.
MCLA Gallery 51 is a program of MCLA’s Berkshire Cultural Resource Center. Go to: www.mcla.edu for gallery hours & more information or call 413-662-5324.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) is the Commonwealth's public liberal arts college and a campus of the Massachusetts state university system. MCLA promotes excellence in learning and teaching, innovative scholarship, intellectual creativity, public service, applied knowledge, and active and responsible citizenship. MCLA graduates are prepared to be practical problem solvers and engaged, resilient global citizens. For more information, go to www.mcla.edu.
