ART MEETS MIGRATION

Art meets migration

The issue of migration provides a fertile source of friction for contemporary artists. Many works focus on the precarious search for identity. Social power relationships play an important role here: who decides who belongs?
In the next three rooms you’ll find examples of the stance artists have taken in dealing with the subject of migration in various ways.

The artist Farida Heuck designed an action in Innsbruck’s Maria-Theresien-Strasse in 2011 in which a fictional committee discussed a so-called “multilingual short story”. What they were saying was that Austrians who speak only one language can only remain in the country if they learn a non-EU language. The parody humorously unmasks the political power structures and unacceptable constraints when integration’s reduced to language acquisition.

Migrants are often perceived only as ignorant inferior victims. In a lecture performance, Ana Hoffner impressively staged a self-confident refusal to accept this role, criticising racist attitudes which, at present, often unthinkingly find a broad consensus. Ana Hoffner also indirectly forces us to think about how to deal with migration in the museum.

In the film “Passages” by Lisl Ponger, migration and tourism appear as two different phenomena of a mobile society - depending on which social perspective is taken. Ponger also examines the alleged superiority of the west, a legacy of colonialism. Lovely holiday snaps from the second half of the 20th century are commented on by background voices, and thus changed. There’s a slow transition from holiday memories to migration stories.