SAMUEL ROUSSEAU – LESSIVE RACIALE

Video installation, 2002, Aeroplastics Gallery

The washing machine is not just an object from our daily environment; it washes our clothes, which are the outward signs of our identity. With this installation, Samuel Rousseau (Marseille, 1971) illustrates an eve-ryday dilemma faced by migrants. Do we allow our identity to fade somewhat, or do we “white”wash it in order to be able to roll along in the social machine, or is the important thing precisely for the colours, and thus each person’s own cultural identity, to remain untouched?

NEZAKET EKICI – VEIL FIGHT

Video, 2004, Aeroplastics Gallery

This Turkish artist plays or fights with the pre-eminent Western symbol of Islam. The veil is the focus of debate in contemporary Europe regard-ing integration. With this personal work of video art, in which the artist herself plays the principal role, she shows that the debate is being conducted not only in the public but also in the private sphere. She is daught in a duel between revealing and concealing both her Turkish and her European identity.

AIME NTAKIYICA – WIR

Photo, 2003, Aimé Ntakiyica

The artist takes the title of his work, “Wir” from the German sen-tence “Wir sind die Ander” (we are the other). He investigates what a national culture and identity today can mean within a highly globalised and multicultural world, one in which informa-tion and persons circulate freely. Having moved from Burundi to Belgium as a young boy, the artist is constantly confronted with this cultural cross-fertilisation. In this photo installation, he lets the European and American identity to blend together. He adorns himself with a Scottish costumer or a Tyrolean outfit, then takes an Egyptian profile pose or adopts the stance of an African tribal statue.

WELCOMEEXPO 01.05.2011 > 09.12.2011BELGIUM & IMMIGRATION

UNDERSTAND BETTER TO BETTER UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER

Like all developed countries, modern Belgium is home to a large immigrant population made up of successive waves since its foundation almost two hundred years ago. And, like all developed countries, Belgium has ambiguous relations with the phenomenon of migration, where the imagi-nary and illusory often bear it away beyond factual reality.

The second strand of a cycle of exhibition dedicated to the reality of migration, be.WELCOME#2 aims to capture the collective destinies of immigrant communities and the ways in which they have shaped the physiognomy of this country. This is not a panegyric on immigration, not just an-other idyllic presentation of the slow and painful process of integration experienced by immigrant populations It is more a matter of showing, as objectively as possible, the complex bidirectional links of the process of assimilation, the successes and the limits of that process, the many contri-butions from immigrants to the host society and their own development in contact with their new environment, the tools of welcome in society to integrate the newcomers, their evolution over time, and their successes and failures.

Throughout the exhibition extensive use is made of works of art both classic and contemporary. The last page of this leaflet offers discovery of three of them in detail. The artists’s vision is, in fact, another vital way of perceiving reality.

EXHIBITION PLAN

1_ The history of immigration in Belgium

2_ The faces of immigration Pack your cases

3_ The voices of immigrationWorks of art

Multiple towns

Integration in the future

The way of the fighter

The links with the “country”

Did you know that ... ?Who are they and why did they emigrate?

What do you think?

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