( Title )
Welcome
( Year )
2022
( About )
[…] the refugee is truly ‘the man of rights’ the first and only real appearance of rights outside the fiction of the citizen that always covers them over.
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the refugee as “the man of rights,” the first and real embodiment of human rights, beyond the figure of a “citizen,” inspired reflection and artistic reaction. As a result, we created a photobook entitled WELCOME with the idea that it would be a response to the burning issues emanating from the migration crisis.
The publication gathered specialists from many disciplines — sociologists, writers, historians and theoreticians of art — who, together with the artists, have entered into a dialogue focused on phenomena of migration including such issues as fear of the unknown, exclusion or the manipulation of information (fake news), disseminated for ad-hoc purposes.
The final shape of the book was influenced by events related to the presence of refugees from the Middle East on the Poland-Belarus border, as well as the radical change in the situation in Europe and in the world caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Dramatic information and images open the next chapters of this story — the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. These circumstances demonstrated the paradox of Poland as a country that took in more refugees from Ukraine in a month than all of Europe took in fugitives from Africa and the Middle East during the 2015 migration crisis.
The book took the form of an archive/collage, bearing in mind that “completeness is the utopia of every archive, for if we want to preserve ‘everything’, it soon comes into view that the more we manage to accumulate, the more the frightening amount of what we have not (yet) managed to accumulate becomes apparent.”
*MNRT — THE MINORITY is an international collective of contemporary artists, photographers and scientists based in Poland. The team includes: Gabriela Basta, Joanna Kunert, Aleksandra Krajewska, Magdalena Krajewska, Omar Marques, Natasza Styczyńska, Natalia Wiernik.The collective is responsible for the creation of the publication WELCOME.
( Title )
Welcome
( Year )
2022
( About )
[…] the refugee is truly ‘the man of rights’ the first and only real appearance of rights outside the fiction of the citizen that always covers them over.
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the refugee as “the man of rights,” the first and real embodiment of human rights, beyond the figure of a “citizen,” inspired reflection and artistic reaction. As a result, we created a photobook entitled WELCOME with the idea that it would be a response to the burning issues emanating from the migration crisis.
The publication gathered specialists from many disciplines — sociologists, writers, historians and theoreticians of art — who, together with the artists, have entered into a dialogue focused on phenomena of migration including such issues as fear of the unknown, exclusion or the manipulation of information (fake news), disseminated for ad-hoc purposes.
The final shape of the book was influenced by events related to the presence of refugees from the Middle East on the Poland-Belarus border, as well as the radical change in the situation in Europe and in the world caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Dramatic information and images open the next chapters of this story — the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. These circumstances demonstrated the paradox of Poland as a country that took in more refugees from Ukraine in a month than all of Europe took in fugitives from Africa and the Middle East during the 2015 migration crisis.
The book took the form of an archive/collage, bearing in mind that “completeness is the utopia of every archive, for if we want to preserve ‘everything’, it soon comes into view that the more we manage to accumulate, the more the frightening amount of what we have not (yet) managed to accumulate becomes apparent.”
*MNRT — THE MINORITY is an international collective of contemporary artists, photographers and scientists based in Poland. The team includes: Gabriela Basta, Joanna Kunert, Aleksandra Krajewska, Magdalena Krajewska, Omar Marques, Natasza Styczyńska, Natalia Wiernik.The collective is responsible for the creation of the publication WELCOME.