Abbattere muri (in)visibili Confini, migrazioni e arte contemporanea

Abstract

Contemporary art that turns its attention to investigating the geopolitical
situation of today’s world has long worked on the visible and invisible boundaries that
separate people, societies and cultures. The production on the theme of the reification
of transnational borders through physical barriers (such as walls) or natural barriers
(such as the sea) is now vast both for the quantity of works produced and for the
heterogeneity of the forms in which it expresses itself. For the seriousness of the
consequences of their management on the people who try to cross them and for the
scope of the discourses that, initially local, prove to be potentially universal, two areas
represent emblematic cases: the border between Mexico and the United States and the
Mediterranean basin.
Contemporary art focuses on these areas as well, with contributions that often
resonate with those from other disciplines (anthropology, border studies). Referring to
some of the works realized there in the last twenty years, some recurrences will be
identified in the speeches promoted (denunciation of contingent situations, criticism of
colonialism harbinger of current discriminations, analogies that connect human beings
beyond their cultural variability), coming to identify the final common denominator of
these works in the will to question and break down not only the walls, but also the
borders, seen as remnants of colonial ways of relationship between human beings no
longer acceptable.