PRESS RELEASE

Step into the Footsteps of Syrian Refugees

in Thought Provoking Exhibition at

Watermans

Altered Landscapes Juan delGado Watermans, Main Gallery, Friday 1 April – Sunday 29 May, FREE.

In the last three years, 120,000 migrants and political asylum seekers have entered Greece with more than 40,000 of them arriving through the Greece-Turkey border at the river Evros. In this new exhibition, Altered Landscapes, Spanish artist Juan delGado (b. 1965) follows their journey, submerging himself in their world and bringing the experience to Watermans in a multimedia exhibition. For this exhibition delGado travelled to Greece to film, photograph and record the journeys taken by the refugees. delGado has not filmed these ‘invisible’ people, who proliferate our media, but the places they have passed through. There are traces of their existence, fragmented experiences, fleeting moments and marks left on the land as they pass through to find safety. Step inside the journeys they have made and places they have passed through in this immersive experience, comprising video, photography and soundscape. The exhibition is also an intimate account of what the foreign wanderer experiences and reflects the themes of physical movement and journey, the intimate and personal experience of walking through an unfamiliar landscape reminiscent of the experience of refugees. The installation invites the viewer to navigate the different elements of the artwork in the space, to pause and reflect on the experiences and journeys of the refugees, inviting people to speak about things they are afraid of. The project is a reflection and response to the current situation in Europe - that has become a place full of borders. Inspired by the text The Metamorphosis by Czech writer Franz Kafka, the project centres on a personal diary from a narrator, a European subject, who is describing how his human identity is gradually dissolving and transforming into something else, as a response to the suffering he is viewing. These reflections are provoked by the events and debates of the last few years around the refugee crisis and are contextualised in a landscape which is strongly embedded in our collective imaginary, the Acropolis, the ancient citadel of Athens and the birthplace of the democratic values and culture.

By using still and moving images, the resulting artwork examines what social theorist and anthropologist Nicholas De Genova calls “the spectacles of militarised border control and securitisation in all aspects of travel and transit”, a reality that appears to be increasingly spreading across the European margins. The exhibition will include a series of workshops led by Juan delGado and The Paper Project (Saturday 16 April – Saturday 14 May, info to be announced on Watermans’ website) as well as a symposium (Saturday 21 May) to discuss issues of displacement and migration, exploring how art can catalyse debate around human rights and create a dialogue around these issues, speakers include Michaela Crimmin (Culture + Conflict), Á ine O’Brien (Counterpoint Arts) and Saphia Crowther (Amnesty International). The exhibition is accompanied by an audio description available through headphones, and screened with captions in regular intervals. BSL interpretation can be provided at the symposium on request. Please see the website for more details. Background to the Exhibition As with Juan delGado’s other work, Altered Landscapes reflects on the idea of belonging. It considers the need we all have for positioning ourselves within an environment or context that makes sense to us. His own journey as a migrant from Spain to England has led him to focus on this universal theme. In 2014 he produced a multiscreen installation which explored the reality of displacement experienced by thousands of farmers in the northern region of Choco in Colombia. In The Flickering Darkness (Revisited), the viewer sees the nocturnal activity of hundreds of labourers working in the largest food market in the Latin American continent, who remain invisible to the inhabitants of the city they feed. The experience of displacement and trauma is also explored in his project Fléches Sans Corps, an onsite installation produced in 2003 when the phenomenon of transmigration began between North Africa and Spain. This project was presented at The Crypt, London in 2003, supported by Arts Council England, and more recently at the Mardin Biennial, Turkey in May 2015. Altered Landscapes is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Artist Juan delGado has been awarded an INSIDE commission from New Art Exchange and DASH. INSIDE is a Disability Arts commissioning programme led by DASH with funding from Arts Council England. Artist Biography Juan delGado works across a range of media including installation and photography and has produced an extensive body of work that explores themes of trauma, landscape, disability, dislocation and gender. delGado has exhibited widely including at ARCO’05, Madrid, End of the World Biennial, Argentina, and the 2014 Mardin Biennial, Turkey. He was selected in 1997 for the John Kobal Photographic Portraiture Awards, for the 2012 BBC Big Screens programme, in 2013 he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Open Forest exhibition, and in 2014 he was awarded a major project commission by Unlimited that premièred at the Southbank Centre, London. His work has been supported by many prestigious organisations including the British Council, the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England, Spanish Ministry of Culture, and ArtSchool Palestine. http://www.juandelgado.co/

About Watermans

Watermans is the major arts centre in West London. Its high quality programme is designed to appeal to all

communities and incorporates independent cinema, children’s theatre, new media arts and a range of creative

workshops and courses. As well as this, Watermans delivers an extensive learning and participation

programme for young people, typically focused on creative skills development, raising aspirations and

introducing young people to creative employment opportunities.

Watermans also programmes and delivers an outdoor arts season in Bell Square, a permanent outdoor arts

space in Hounslow town centre which is now in its third year. It also leads the Circulate outer London outdoor

arts touring and Creative People & Places Hounslow, part of a major Arts Council England investment in

engaging people in the Arts in areas of low engagement.

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about Watermans’ activities contact Erica Weston, Marketing Director on Erica@watermans.org.uk