If the age that we live in, is sometimes described as the „migration era“, then the name does not only indicate the movements of people as the most important factor of modern world’s transformation, but it also defines challenges thrown at culture, statehood, identity, customs, and even daily life on both individual and collective level. Places that are abandoned by emigrants, as well as those where immigrants arrive at, equally, although in different ways, have been marked by a break-up, that the lives of local communities are exposed to by migrations.

Pei-Lin Cheng and Ivan Polliart use a technical element necessary in every movement to create a metaphorical picture and to recognize cultural consequences of migration. Suitcases and bags used by people who travel in order to carry their belongings, or in case of migration of goods - become carriers of more general meaning.

Pei-Lin Cheng shares own experiences of immigration, trying to determine an identity torn between the identification with birth place, and the place chosen for living. Perhaps the suitcases, made of fabrics with symbolic meaning, precisely picture the location of identity and the lives of immigrants, an identity suspended in the space between, and a life locked up in a suitcase always ready to hit the road. Ivan Polliart focuses on the economic aspect of immigration, in his work a travel bag, used for carrying goods by semi-legal and illegal traders from the Central and Eastern Europe, becomes a testimony of burdens imposed on people along with the recovery of freedom in the region. The freedom of travel, the freedom of making ends meet, the freedom to choose how and where to live, involved accepting the burden of responsibility for one’s own fate. Ivan’s work in an ironic and paradoxical way shows this dialectic of release and responsibility, of the lightweight and load.

curator: Kamil Kuskowski

Actual Art Zona / Zona Sztuki Aktualnej
Tymienieckiego 3, Łódź
www.zona-art.pl