Thanks to three big grants from The Obel Family Foundation, The Danish Arts Foundation, and Foreningen Roskilde Festival, CAMP is in September able to launch the new two-year exhibition program State of Integration: Artistic analyses of the challenges of coexistence.
Five internationally acclaimed curators and artists – Nicholas Mirzoeff, Tania Bruguera, Temi Odumosu, Galit Eilat and Sandi Hilal – will each guest curate an ambitious group exhibition on coexistence and the politics of belonging.
It is the first time that CAMP collaborates with external curators. The intention is to introduce new curatorial methodologies and attract new artists to the center.
In the wake of the large influx of refugees and immigrants that arrived in Denmark and the rest of the West in 2015, immigration and integration are once again at the top of the agenda and have created divisions between politicians and populations over how immigration is to be handled. Questions about who should be admitted and what benefits should be afforded to new members of the Western societies are some of the most controversial questions today.
The international community is still far from having found sustainable solutions. There is therefore an increasing need for exhibitions and forums that can debate immigration issues in new and more fruitful ways.
In four different exhibitions, some of the most visionary artists of today will examine why immigration poses such a major challenge to many Western countries, and how refugees, immigrants, and diaspora populations experience demands of integration or assimilation into the majority culture.
More than 30 internationally acclaimed artists, curators, and cultural producers will contribute to the exhibition series, helping us to understand processes behind key concepts such as integration, assimilation, belonging, parallel societies, and co-citizenship.
When contemporary art opens up new perspectives of greater complexity and breadth, do we have the courage to embrace them and convert them into alternative models for coexistence and citizenship?
Tania Bruguera, Awareness Ribbon for Immigrant Respect Campaign (2011)
Sandi Hilal, The Hospitality Room (2016)
The 16-year-old activist Lamon Reccord stirs one police officer during a protest in Chicago on Nov. 25. 2015 against the fatal shooting of the 17-year-old Laquan McDonald the year before. Photo: John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune