THE OTHERS

The exhibition 'The Others, The Foreigner' was  the theme chosen for the first year (2018) of the cultural European project Magic Carpets. The emerging curator Giulia Pardini (Latitudo) invite Melanie Garland, nominated by the partner ZK/U Berlin - Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, to be part of the first Art residency of the project.

Curatorial text by Giulia Pardini

It’s not easy to deal with the recent history of our country, but this project must also address the reality that surrounds us at a difficult time. With this theme, we wanted to look at the phenomenon in its complexity and in its contradictions, through a profound reflection on what is happening around us, especially through the artists, who manage to analyse both the surface and the nucleus, both the roots and their branches. This attention marked the residences of both artists, who focused on the phenomenon of migration as well as on the individuals entering and crossing through our country in search of refuge.

Melanie Garland, instead, reflected on the condition of limbo that migrants find themselves in. In her work, too, a recurring element is water, the water of the sea and the water of the river that divides the city, as well as water that cradles those in limbo, seeking fortune. Her work, Liminality, which is marked by ephemeral elements like paper or light that interpret the fragility of the migrant condition, compares two different migrations: the historical migration of Italians toward America (especially Latin America), and the more controversial current migration of those on the shores of the Mediterranean.