Curated by Diana Ali at Art Center Caravel, ARTE.M Association, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal 2024 & Arthall, Victoria, Gozo, Malta 2025

Concept:

We are facing many barriers globally where our identities are being bruised, rejected, and turned away. This leaves a tension for bodies, thoughts, and circumstances to be accepted and co-exist. Artists have been invited to contest and question what it means to face barriers. Often our artworks have been declined from being shown and exhibited. This exhibition gives an opportunity for the art to migrate. There may not be a utopia, but there are ways of overcoming barriers. Imagine the artwork being personified. What would it say if it had freedom of movement, no immigration law, finding asylum and a sense of belonging without being displaced? A fantastic array of international artists come together in one space to question, confront and seek sanctuary through their artwork.

Exhibition information/Flyer:

Exhibition information/Flyer:

UPDATE 2025

In 2024, a majority of the work was detained by the Portuguese customs on the way to be exhibited in Madeira. The artwork did not have a freedom to roam. In 2025, the art hopes to confront crossings and overcome barriers by having the opportunity to be exhibited at Arthall, Malta.

Doreen Maloney #2 (US)

'Quarantine/ Isolation/ Invisible Walls' 

(Print 8x12cm)


During my travels, I was placed on a seven-day Covid quarantine in Berlin, and I found myself confined to a small hotel room without air conditioning. With little food, no medication, and a skyrocketing heart rate in the scorching summer heat, the hardest part was the lack of movement, isolation, and forced separation.
I started photographing to break the monotony. There was a strange feeling of being “there but not there.”  It was a stark reminder of how isolation, in any form, can make you feel invisible and vulnerable, whether it's quarantine, deportation, or the walls society builds around those it deems “other.”
Revisiting the concept of this project, and the enforced isolation, I began to imagine what it must be like for those facing mass deportations in the U.S., people confined not just by walls, but by a system that pushes them out, isolates them, and silences their voices. Covid quarantine gave me a small taste of what it's like to be cut off from the world, not just physically, but emotionally and socially. We often take for granted how easy it is to move, to connect, and to be seen. But when borders, whether medical, political, or economic, divide us, the reality is suffering.