Expats / Cladestines

«Expats / Cladestines» – exhibited at the newly opened WIELS contemporary art center – explores the question of plural identities, which are formed beyond national borders and lines of demarcation, wether they are real or imaginary. Addressing the obvious duality between expats and clandestines as a starting point, this exhibition will focus on the phenomena of complex biographies and on the tremendous cultural mix, visibility and anonymity, presence and absence, and on the work of contemporary artists in the swirl of migration.

Against the background of global migrations, the artistic postures of instability and permanence, strangeness and familiarity, belonging and loss, are notions which reveal the ambiguous and contradictory experience of migration as a permanent cultural challenge.

In Brussels, as in more and more cities, there is a great deal of public discussion surrounding the incoming stream of expatriates, even though their presence is barely noticeable. Their existence is almost always considered from a purely economic perspective. The expatriates are seen as a factor and consequence of the economic process of globalisation as well as the cause behind the rise of the cost of living. At the same time, there is a constant debate around the more visible and diverse forms of semi-legal and clandestine migrations.

With: Francis Alÿs, Gabriel Kuri, Nairy Baghramian, Moshekwa Langa, Saâdane Afif, André Cadere, Chen Zhen