Muros Blandos. Ser entre bordes

Muros Blandos. Ser entre bordes
Pia Arke, Oreet Ashery, Asco, Sebastián Calfuqueo, Colectivo Charco, Mujeres Creando, Javier Téllez and Vladimir Tomic

Curated by Daniela Berger, Lily Hall and Mette Kjærgaard Præst

Muros Blandos. Ser entre bordes (Soft Walls. Being between borders) is an international group exhibition that aims to open up a conversation about notions of migration, otherness and possibilities of transformation. It brings together eight artists and collectives from different geographic locations, socio-political perspectives and moments in time who share an impulse to question social constructions of power. Together these disparate voices find points of confluence and divergence, creating a series of layered conversations which audiences are invited to join.

By inhabiting states of being not one or the other, but being in between, the exhibition acknowledges that categories such as nationality, territory, class, body, gender and sexuality are inherently mutable. Each new commission responds to the context of the museum and the current political climate in Chile, extending beyond the walls of the institution. Meanwhile, the existing works included in the show, whilst created in response to situations of migration, marginalisation or exile elsewhere, contribute to the conversation with new perspectives. Drawing on the ideas of Brazilian theoretician and pedagogue Paulo Freire, the exhibition poses questions rendered urgent by increasingly divisive politics around the globe: can the state of being in-between borders, which is becoming a reality for more and more people, become a powerful position of resistance? What are the possibilities of questioning the roles of oppressor and oppressed, towards a transformation of these dynamics?