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.

Douglas McCulloh (California, US)

Gulls: 01-01-2013; US/ Mexico border

Archival pigment print (50.8 x 33.8cm)

Gulls: 04-26-2017; US/ Mexico border

Archival pigment print (50.8 x 33.8cm)



I wait on the militarized beach and absorb the slow roll of the Pacific waves. Cameras sit on high towers, armed officers on all-terrain vehicles. Razor wire glints in the sun. But above, white gulls float back and forth across the barrier—untethered, beyond control, aloft, ideas of a better idea. When they wheel toward the border, I make another image of freedom.

This is where the California-Mexico border slices into the Pacific Ocean. It’s difficult to reach—an hours-long hike through the Tijuana River floodplain, repeated questioning by green-shirted, jeep-borne U.S. Immigration Enforcement Officers. The place is symbolic, actual, brutal, addictive. I’ve returned repeatedly.

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