In Transit

Group Exhibition

Crawford Art Gallery, Cork City
6 March 2020 – 17 January 2021

In Transit is a multidisciplinary presentation that focuses on the tentative, limbo-like experience of living between different cultures, exploring the stories of immigrants who traverse the no-man’s land that exists between home and hope.

The lives of those fleeing from unsafe, economically depressed homelands towards dreams of a more secure future are filled with boredom, sadness, fear, and apathy. They experience the deep absence of the loss of loved ones, familiar places, and citizenship. The photography and video works in this exhibition are created in Germany, Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, and Iran, and are testimonies to day-to-day survival alongside the struggle to find a sense of normalcy and stability and a place to call home.

Utilising photography, performance and filmmaking, each body of work examines the experiences of those thrust into a culture that is markedly different from their own. These stories illustrate the physical and psychological challenges faced, while additionally looking at the deeper discussion of what constitutes citizenship in the wake of the enormous migrations into Europe. Through their narratives, the artists strive to disrupt accepted misconceptions about immigration and otherness in order to tell a more accurate story. By collaborating with their subjects they give voice to those who must endure mountains of dead time while tangled up in bureaucracy in order to become more than merely ‘registered aliens.’ The exhibition is curated by East Wing Artistic Director, Peggy Sue Amison.

Tanya Habjouqa (JO) is an award-winning photographer, journalist and educator. Her practice links social documentary, collaborative portraiture, and participant observation. Her principal interests include gender, representations of otherness, dispossession and human rights, with a particular concern for the ever-shifting socio-political dynamics in the Middle East. Habjouqa’s work has been exhibited worldwide and is in the collections of MFA Boston, Institut du Monde Arab, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a founding member of Rawiya, the first all-female photography collective from the Middle East. She is represented by East Wing Gallery.

George Awde (USA/LB) born in Boston of Lebanese origin, Awde presents alternative narratives, delving into issues surrounding citizenship, nationality and sexuality, focusing on people living on the margins of the city and their parallel realities between life in Beirut and elsewhere. He graduated with an MFA in Photography from Yale University (2009) and holds a BA in painting from Massachusetts College of the Arts, Boston. He is represented by East Wing Gallery and co-founder and co-director of marra.tein residency program in Beirut.

Daniel Castro Garcia (UK) was born and raised in Oxford, England, by parents who emigrated from Spain’s Galicia region. Since May 2015, Castro-Garcia has revisited many of Europe’s refugee/ migrant hotspots. The book, Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015 – 2016 was published in 2016. In 2017 Castro Garcia received the British Journal of Photography’s International Photography Award and selected as a grantee by the Magnum Foundation Fund. He was also awarded the 2017 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. Castro Garcia is represented by East Wing Gallery.

Gohar Dashti (IR) received her M.A. in Photography from the Fine Art University of Tehran (2005). After studying photography in Iran, she has spent many years focusing her practice on social issues with particular references to history and culture through a convergence of interests in anthropology and sociology. Her practice continuously develops from life events and connection between the personal and the universal, the political and the fantasized. Dashti’s work has been exhibited around the world and is in collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum (UK), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (JP), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (USA), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City (USA), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (USA), Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Chicago (USA), and Kadist Art Foundation, Paris She presently lives with her family in United States.

Stefanie Zofia Schulz (DE) was born in Germany and is a graduate of the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. Her photographic practice focuses on the documentation of important social issues and the human condition. Her work has been exhibited in Festival Circulations (FR) in 2016 and has been published in i-D Magazine, Emerge magazine and Dazed digital. She presently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

A catalogue of the exhibition is available on line for purchase through Blue Sky Books.