Immigrant artists explore journey, cultures
‘Transplant Eyes’ takes on tough topic
At the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, nine artists are having a discussion that a lot of people would rather avoid.
It’s an uneasy time to talk about displacement, immigration and the dilemmas of cross-cultural integration. The swirl of events and politicking around these topics make them about as awkward as asking someone how they voted in November. You kind of don’t want to go there, especially if you’re lucky enough to be among the non-displaced.
In “Transplant Eyes,” on view through July 8, a group of foreign-born Midwesterners raises the topic before you have a chance to. They use photography, video, installations, drawings and three-dimensional works to reflect on the perpetually repeated human experience of leaving one’s sense of the familiar behind and adapting to someone else’s.
The artists in this show live and work in the Midwest, primarily Wisconsin and Minnesota. They arrived in the United States as recently as six years ago and as long ago as 35. Their homelands are Syria, Korea, India, Iran, Mexico, Japan and Belarus — plus Duluth, Minn., in the case of one man raised by immigrant parents.
Given these differences, the first truth this exhibit reveals about the immigrant experience is that there are many different truths.
“Transplant Eyes” is about longing and frustration, hope and fear, wistfulness and disenchantment. Many works feel deeply intimate, such as Essma Imady’s “Child Harness.” It’s a rock affixed with pink shoulder straps, poignantly mimicking the ubiquitous school backpack and making a point about the burdens an immigrant’s child carries. Imady, who is from Syria and now lives in the Twin Cities, has etched the rock subtly with prayers and hopes for her daughter.
In “Protective Footwear,” Nirmal Raja of Milwaukee evokes her childhood in India, when her grandmother would protectively rub her feet with turmeric paste at the end of a visit. Wax-like “slippers” molded from feet traverse a gallery corner from floor to ceiling. The inside of each is coated with turmeric, some of which has sifted to the floor in a golden smudge. The installation speaks of tradition, wandering and the torn promise of safe passage.
A few artists challenge ruling perceptions by exploring some “what ifs.” One of them is Yevgeniya Kaganovich, born in Belarus and currently a professor of art at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee. Kaganovich gets us thinking tangibly about crossing
uncomfortable divides in in her “Mouth Piece” series, in which molded-rubber mouth pieces — imagine a hybrid of dust mask and mouth guard — are connected to each other, suggesting two people breathing each other’s air.
Xavier Tavera, a Minneapolis photographer born in Mexico, overlays meticulous images of the U.S.-Mexico border with sketches of shelters and tunnels, rethinking the possibilities of a fraught landscape.
Then there’s Wing Young Huie, a Duluth native and the only member of his immediate family not born in China. To imagine what life might have been if his parents had never come to the United States, he traveled to China and photographed men in their workplace settings, then switched places with them. Wearing their clothes and standing in the same place, he asked each man to snap his photo.
The difference in the way Wing inhabits each identity sums up the experience of belonging neither here nor there.
There’s also an air of good humor about it all that lingers in my mind as an undercurrent of hope.
Elsewhere, artists plumb traditions, beliefs and symbols from their homelands to come to terms with their hereand-now lives. The most intriguing example is by Katayoun Amjadi, who co-curated this show with John Schuerman.
Her take on the nightingale and rose, symbols with centuries-old significance in Persian culture, mixes the ancient and the mundane with a sobering wink.
Mika Negishi Laidlaw’s porcelain “hands” harken to familiar Japanese interpretations of waves. Nina Ghanbarzadeh adds depth to her appealing collage and drawings by incorporating words in her native Farsi language. Rina Yoon references water to comment on interconnectedness.
Taken together, these works immerse us in the conflicting messages, distorted promises and everyday dilemmas that the displaced experience. They are timely personal insights into a timeless human condition.
The Walker’s Point Center for the Arts is located at 839 S. 5th St., Milwaukee. Visit
wpca-milwaukee.org for details.