Prints can be purchased here: https://jkcgallery.online/purchase-prints/
Sales will go to charities selected by the artists, the gallery, or sales will go directly to the artists. The gallery has selected the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders.
The Road Home: Migration, Displacement, and Redefining where we Live, will be a visual conversation among artists who have experienced different forms of identity displacement.
Artists were given the option to sell their work to support themselves or, if they were able, to donate the sales to charity. The gallery will make up to three prints of each work as they are sold. The show was provided at no cost to the artists.
Migration as shelter in the middle of nowhere,
a lifeline in the open at the crossing of borders
Immigrants start from scratch, changing from the inside out and adopting new languages, on many occasions, to escape from places that are affected by deep-rooted violence or internal conflict to more livable places in the world. They may do so with a passport, but more often than not, they do it without a visa, without papers, without passports. There are many ways of understanding loss and the concept of ‘loser’: some people lose their home, because of war; their country, because of destruction; their family, because of distance or violence; a passport, because of lacking legal documents; or their identity because of their stateless status of people in search of a nation.
Migration, although forced, is a lifeline when there is no other alternative in a country at war. Crossing borders then becomes the only way to stay alive. Greece’s miscalled ‘refugee crisis’ in 2016, represented by the image of the drowned Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, found face down on the Turkish shores, continues to grow. Today, according to the latest UNHCR estimates, there are more than 80 million people in the world seeking shelter, on top of the thousands of people seeking political asylum or a safe place to live due to internal displacement. In Greece’s case, they remain stranded in Greek refugee camps for countless months, while they await receiving asylum in Europe. The cemetery is located in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. There lie souls fleeing from broken countries in conflict who have been forgotten by the international media, as has happened with Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In the case of Colombia, a country with an internal armed conflict that has lasted many decades, it has had to receive, for the first time in its history and over a few years span, almost two million Venezuelan immigrants. Out of this number, those who did not find work or a way of life in Colombia, had to continue searching opportunities in other Latin American countries such as Chile, Peru and Brazil.
How to tell or portray, with images and words, the stories of a part of the population that is mistreated and marginalized by the new host nations for not having papers, and of a sea of people who had to cross borders through improvised trails as the lowest class of citizens? They are ‘illegal’ and ‘poor’ at the borders: the most vulnerable communities of all. In this sense, migrant women get hit the hardest; many of them, mothers of several children, walk without economic resources, without partners, without papers. They make up a large number of the population at refugee camps, the borders and the streets of large capitals as if they were homeless people, begging for means to survive. We face one of the greatest challenges in human history, a history which is marked by movements, conflicts and violence: how to socially integrate undocumented immigrants and millions of people who are still looking for a safe place in the world, a home, where they can develop as human beings, as a family and with work? We tell this story with images, with the respect they deserve, knowing that we still have a long way to go…
-Fátima Martínez
Footnotes:
- Afghan widow, her husband was killed by ISIS at an attack where she was injured. Port of Piraeus in Athens. Greece, 2016.
- Woman with baby seeking shelter in the port of Piraeus in Athens, Greece.
- A Syrian mother holds Fawash, one of the first babies born at the border between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, in her arms. The family is stranded in Idomeni, an improvised refugee camp on the border, where thousands of Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi families, among other, gathered in the spring of 2016.
- A message at Idomeni refugee camp. Greece, 2016.
Featured artists:
Yshao Lin
Yshao Lin (Fuzhou, China) works with artist books, photography, new media arts, and installation. By drawing upon forms rooted in personal memory, struggles, and experience, His works investigate issues in migration, sense of belonging and cultural negotiation under modernization. He has have been recognized with awards. He has been selected for Antoine d’Agata’s residency in Arles, France, chosen to participate in the New York Times Portfolio Review and received the Flash Forward Award (Canada). His works have been exhibited in COME TOGETHER: ART AND POLITICS IN A CLIMATE OF UNREST, Tate Modern, United Kingdom, and other venues in China and the United States. His works are in institutional collections including Jiazazhi Photo Book Library (China), and Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection.
Tomas Ayuso – https://www.tomasayuso.com/
Honduran writer and documentary photojournalist. His work focuses on Latin American conflict as it relates to the drug war, forced displacement, and urban dispossession. Tomas seeks to bind the disparate threads of communities into the grand, interlinked story of the Western Hemisphere.
In covering the different types of violence facing the region’s people, Tomas hopes to create a record of both continental struggles and local successes.
Tomas Ayuso is a National Geographic Explorer, recipient of the James Foley Award for Conflict Journalism, and a World Press Photo Global Talent. His work has been exhibited in galleries and public spaces around the world. Currently, Tomas is teaching photography and storytelling workshops for underrepresented communities in the Americas.
Rola Khayyat – https://rolakhayyat.com
Rola Khayyat is a Lebanese interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator. Her work explores new dimensions on the representation of war, memory, and belonging.
Rola has curated shows in Beirut, Thessaloniki, Havana, and New York, such as the BEYroute for the third Thessaloniki Biennale, Lattice Work at the Black and White gallery, Simmer at Kunstraum LLC. and Light in Wartime at apexart. She has participated in artist residencies such as Artellewa, Kamen Art Residency, and curatorial workshops such as Berlin Herbst Salon’s YCA, the Salzburg Academy of Art and the Festival Academy. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including exhibitions at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Okk / raum 29, Catalyst Arts Belfast Photo Festival 2013, the 21st International Istanbul Art Fair and North of History (NY). Rola is a recipient of the Magnum Foundation Fellowship (2020) and the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2021). Khayyat received a B.A. in Historical Studies from the American University of Beirut (2003), a diploma in Intensive Drawing from the Florence Academy of Art (2005) and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2016). She is currently Assistant professor in the Painting and Printmaking Department at VCUarts in Qatar.
Maysun – https://www.maysun.eu/
Maysun is an award winning Spanish – Palestinian independent visual journalist based in Spain and mainly focused in documentary photography and storytelling. The interest of learning and her desire to help people made her realise the necessity of documenting her surroundings.
With a degree in Photography, a Postgraduate Diploma in Photojournalism from Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Master’s Degree in Cinematography by ECAM Film School of Madrid, Maysun has been devoted to journalism since 2005. For 18 years, she has been covering conflicts, political and social crisis and environmental issues all around the world, including Europe –specially the Balkans – , Southeast Asia, North and East Africa, Central America, but with special emphasis in the Middle East.
She has worked for non profit clients (NGOS) such as Intermón-Oxfam and Oxfam Internacional, Red Cross, European Comission (EU), AECID, Instituto Cervantes and national/international News Agencies such as EPA, AFP, Corbis, or ACN (Spain). Her work has been published in the most important papers, magazines and other kind of media such as Time Magazine, The New York Times, Lens Blog by NYT, National Geographic, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Stern, Focus magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, ABC News, NBC News, Al Jazeera, Die Welt, El Pais, El Mundo, CNN, Ojo de Pez Magazine, among others.
Mazen El Magani, lights a fire to warm his family of 28 people. They have been living there, next to ruins of their house, in a tent, without running water, electricity or heating, for at least six months. His house, and his brother’s, both located in the neighborhood of Shuja’iyya, one of the most punished areas of the Strip, were devastated by Israeli bombing during the summer offensive of 2014. They evacuated the house at 6am when they perceived that it was on fire. Contrary to what people may think, after every Israeli military operation in Gaza ends, the situation of Palestinians tends to worsen even more. The lack of electricity, water and heating, coupled with the cold winter temperatures, own seasonal rains that bring flooding and the blockade of materials and fuel to help rebuild and restart the damaged economy of the region make survival a real challenge. Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, Gaza Strip on 21 January 2015. ©MAYSUN. 
Mazen El Magani, lights a fire to warm his family of 28 people. They have been living there, next to ruins of their house, in a tent, without running water, electricity or heating, for at least six months. His house, and his brother’s, both located in the neighborhood of Shuja’iyya, one of the most punished areas of the Strip, were devastated by Israeli bombing during the summer offensive of 2014. They evacuated the house at 6am when they perceived that it was on fire. Contrary to what people may think, after every Israeli military operation in Gaza ends, the situation of Palestinians tends to worsen even more. The lack of electricity, water and heating, coupled with the cold winter temperatures, own seasonal rains that bring flooding and the blockade of materials and fuel to help rebuild and restart the damaged economy of the region make survival a real challenge. Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, Gaza Strip on 21 January 2015. ©MAYSUN. 
Mazen El Magani, lights a fire to warm his family of 28 people. His house, and the house of his brother, in the neighborhood of Shijaiyeh, one of the most punished areas of the Strip, were devastated by Israeli bombing during last summer offensive 2014. They evacuated the house at 6am when they perceived that it was on fire. Now they live in a tent in the ruins of their house, without running water, electricity or heating. After 6 months from the end of the war, the situation of Palestinians in Gaza continues to worsen. The lack of electricity, water and heating, coupled with the cold winter temperatures, own seasonal rains that have brought flooding and the blockade of materials and fuel to help rebuild and restart the damaged economy of the region make survival a real challenge. Shijaiyeh neighbourhood, Gaza Strip on 21 January 2015.
Jennifer Cabral – www.piercecabraleditions.com
Born in São Paulo, Brazil (1974)
Lives in New Jersey, U.S.
Photographer Jennifer Cabral holds a BFA from the School of Fine Arts Escola Guignard, and a BFA in Social Communications from PUC Minas, in Brazil. Cabral is currently pursuing a MFA in Information at Rutgers University – School of Communication. Since 2010, she is a Library Collection Photographer at Princeton University.
This is how Cabral describes her work: “My explorations in photography may be anchored in documentation and printmaking but it is the word that directs my art making. I frequently embed adjective, nouns and verbs into photography as I search for understanding of my own feelings and experiences.
In my attempts to address issues such as climate change, immigration, racism or environmental crisis, what is revealed are my own histories. From universal themes personal layers emerge, and I become vulnerably revealed. My curiosity fluctuates among many themes as the collective accidentally collides into times and spaces I happen to occupy.
In my latest works, the camera has gradually become a secondary tool. As I resort to various archives to construct narratives, photographs become interwoven imagery and words in order to fully convey what I want to portray.”
Icía Vázquez – www.iciavazquez.com
Icía Vázquez is a Spanish fashion designer and photographer from A Coruña who graduated from the University of Vigo. In 2020 she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in the One Year Conservatory Program in Photography at the New York Film Academy, NY.
Vázquez’s background in fashion has a strong influence of social actions such as feminism, environmentalism, and the LGBTQ+ movement.
The visual character of fashion and photography inspires her to use both disciplines as communication tools to address current issues affecting contemporary society. Her work is characterized by the importance of a visual narrative, turning discourse into political statement. Icía seeks to make people question the social conventions imposed on issues related to the construction of gender and its roles.
For example, her last project, “Wardrobe cleaning’’ critiques of how fashion was used to hamper women’s movements throughout history, turning them into additional decorative objects in the household.
Fátima Martínez – https://www.instagram.com/fatigrafias/
Fatima Martinez is a Journalist and lecturer in Journalism based in Bogota (Colombia) since 2017. Documentary photographer, looking for portraits, street photos and images in the middle of nowhere, wherever city or country around the world where people are, where emotions appear suddenly and where arts take place.
Fátima wrote the above essay for this show. The essay in Spanish follows:
La migración como refugio en medio de la nada,
un salvavidas en la intemperie a las puertas de fronteras
Ser inmigrante es comenzar de cero, mudar de piel y, hasta de idioma, en numerosas ocasiones, para viajar a los lugares del mundo más habitables, fundamentalmente, para salir de lugares o territorios salpicados por la violencia intensiva o el conflicto interno de un país, unas veces con pasaporte, y otras muchas, sin una visa, sin documentos y sin pasaportes. Hay muchas maneras de entender la pérdida o el concepto de ‘perdedor’, aquellos que pierden su casa, por una guerra, su país, por la destrucción, su familia, por la distancia o la violencia, un pasaporte, por carecer de documentos legales, o su identidad al convertirse en apátridas, en busca de una nación.
La migración forzada es un salvavidas cuando no hay otra alternativa, entre el origen de un país en guerra y el traspaso de fronteras como el único camino para seguir vivos. La mal llamada ‘crisis de refugiados’ en Grecia en 2016, después de meses más tarde de la imagen del niño sirio ahogado, Aylan Kurdi, encontrado boca abajo en las costas turcas, sigue creciendo. Hoy, son más de 80 millones de personas en el mundo las que buscan refugio, según las últimas estimaciones de ACNUR, a las que se les suman miles de personas en busca de asilo político o de un lugar seguro donde vivir por desplazamientos internos. En el caso de Grecia, siguen varados en campos de refugiados griegos meses y meses, con el afán de conseguir asilo en Europa. El cementerio se ubica en las aguas del mar Mediterráneo, de almas que huyen de países rotos y en conflicto, olvidados por los medios de comunicación internacionales, como ha sucedido con Siria, Iraq, Afganistán o Libia. En el caso de Colombia, un país con un conflicto interno desde hace décadas, ha tenido que acoger, por primera vez en su historia, en pocos años, a casi dos millones de inmigrantes venezolanos, y los que no encontraron su hogar y su trabajo en Colombia, tuvieron que seguir buscando en otros países de América Latina, como ha sucedido con Chile, Perú o Brasil.
La historia de cómo relatar o retratar, entre imágenes o palabras, a una parte de la población, que por no tener nación o documentos, resulta maltratada o marginada, por las nuevas naciones de acogida, un mar de personas que han de cruzar fronteras por trochas como ciudadanos de última categoría, ‘ilegales’ y ‘pobres’, entre fronteras, como las comunidades más vulnerables de todas. En este sentido, las mujeres migrantes se llevan la peor parte, muchas son madres de varios hijos, sin recursos económicos, sin maridos, sin documentos, las que llenan los campos improvisados de refugiados, las fronteras y las calles de grandes capitales como si fueran mendigas, sin hogar, a la petición de una limosna para sobrevivir. Nos enfrentamos a uno de los mayores desafíos de la historia de la humanidad, marcada siempre por movimientos humanos, conflictos y violencia, la de cómo integrar socialmente a inmigrantes indocumentados y millones de personas que siguen buscando su lugar seguro en el mundo, un hogar, en definitiva, donde se puedan desarrollar como seres humanos, en familias y con trabajo. Lo contamos desde la imagen, con el respeto que se merecen, a sabiendas, de que aún nos queda mucho camino por recorrer todavía…
Notas a pie de foto:
- Viuda afgana, su marido fue asesinado por el ISIS, mientras que ella resultó herida. Puerto del Pireo en Atenas. Grecia, 2016.
- Mujer con bebé en busca de refugio en el puerto del Pireo de Atenas en Grecia.
- Una madre siria tiene en sus brazos a Fawash, uno de los primeros bebés nacidos en la frontera entre Grecia y la República de Macedonia. La familia se encuentra varada en Idomeni, un campo de refugiados improvisado en frontera, donde en primavera de 2016 se llegaron a concentrar miles de familias sirias, afganas, iraquíes, entre otros.
- Mensaje pintado en el campo improvisado de refugiados de Idomeni. Grecia, 2016.
Camilla Martinelli – www.piercecabraleditions.com
Camilla Martineli is a Australian/Brazilian photographer and visual storyteller based in Philadelphia. Her work spans three continents including Asia, North and South America.
Her career started in Philadelphia where she attended Tyler school of Art. Her work focuses on issues surrounding immigration as well as indigenous and displaced communities. In 2017, she traveled to India to work on an ethnographic research project documenting a village of cattle herders in the Gujarati desert. Her book, Sat Nam records her experience in India and covers life in the indigenous community of Jeseda, the open food markets in Dhrangadhra, cotton farmers in rural Gujarat and everyday life in the harsh climates of the Indian desert.
Camilla has been the recipient of the Temple Scholarship in 2017 and the E. Rosen Scholarship in 2018. She was chosen to display her series, Right to Exist at the Pingyao Student exhibition in September of 2019. Her first solo show in December of 2019 displayed photographs from Right to Exist at Gravy Studios.
Ara Oshagan
I am a photographer and installation artist interested in disrupted and marginalized communities and identity.
I am shaped by a history of multi-‐generational dislocation and diasporic identity. A descendant of families who were displaced from Western Armenia by the Armenian Genocide, I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. I grew up in the Armenian community with a French/Armenian/Arabic elementary education. Displaced once again by the Lebanese civil war, my family and Iarrived penniless to the US. I came of age in America. I do not belong to any single country nor language nor nationality. I live in-‐between several languages and cultures, among multiple ways of thinking and ways of life.My identity is transnational and ambiguous: it is a process.
My work as a visual and installation artist springs from these sources: I am interested in the exploration of the ambiguities of my identity and the crossing of physical, cultural and linguistic boundaries. I live and work among disrupted and marginalized communities—communities that have been uprooted, dislocated and relocated and scattered again. Much of my research and work is about the sensibility and structure associated with this way of life. My own familial and personal history is deeply connected to the communities I photograph and engage in my artistic practice.
