Borders that build bridges
Interdisciplinary artist, Wezile Harmans exhibits is latest body of work, Do Not Trust The Borders at UJ Art Gallery.
Interdisciplinary artist Wezile Harmans recently opened his solo exhibition Do Not Trust The Borders at the UJ Art Gallery.
This exhibit was created to focus on the challenges of migration and its dehumanising impact on migrants. His first body of work was done when he was 19 years old and it was a performance art piece.
As an interdisciplinary artist, he combines performance, video, installation and mixed media. He said it was a combination that had helped him understand the spaces he encountered ‘as well as my knowledge of what is happening around me and it is also helping me to further the conversation through these mediums’.
“Moving from one place to another and being influenced by these familiar and unfamiliar spaces can often be intimidating. Do Not Trust The Borders unpacks the psychological and physical effects of borders and boundaries, and what that has done to us.”
Harmans said in some ways, he had encountered similar situations to that of immigrants where his identity and belonging had often been questioned. “Negotiating spaces and being able to present a document to validate your existence, all that can be so dehumanising.”
Even so, he believed the immigrants he had encountered had stories to tell about their daily lives and the fight for their existence.
He hoped the exhibition landed ‘softly’ in people’s lives.
“I hope it does not create further trauma. I hope when one encounters this work, they still find a way to learn and relearn some very difficult realities about their past. We all have a history of movement and may this exhibition be a point of departure in this notion of healing in these unfamiliar spaces.”
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