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.

Luciana Rosado (Portugal)


Family & To Come from Nothing

(Acrylic, gesso, collage on fabric (50 x50cm)
Like everybody else, I am from somewhere else, Newnham College Art Collection, University of Cambridge


I am interested in the possibility of repair. In acknowledgement, vulnerability, imperfection, in being in between but with the power of agency within reach.  
The paintings shown were produced during a period of two years, when I investigated the theme of forced migration as part of the Newnham College Artist-Researcher Collaboration scheme, University of Cambridge. The works were produced by carefully selecting and inscribing the individual voices of refugees onto the canvas. I collected these voices through listening to podcasts, interviews and reading news articles on the subject. 
My intention is to create a visual prompt for us all to reflect on our own sense of belonging, memory and place, and possible inherited sense of guilt, shame and loss which are attached to being a migrant - the one that is transient, moves and shifts between places. The paintings are stitched and collaged together, built with layers upon layers of previous failed work in an attempt to reflect on the importance of our collective effort in working with what we have, and working together.


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