The Poster Project presents
Immigration
Print on paper, 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm
Movement, 2013 Print on paper, 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm
Caution, 2013 Print on paper, 17 x 11 in, 43.2 x 27.9 cm
Customs to Launder in a Doppelganger Print on paper, 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm
Untitled, 2013 Print on paper, 17 x 11 in, 43.2 x 27.9 cm
Coloring Germany, 2013 Print on paper, 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm
Two Migratory Common loons, one Woman Print on paper, 17 x 11 in, 43.2 x 27.9 cm
OH!, 2013 Print on paper, 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm
in.migration, 2013 Print on paper, 17 x 11 in, 43.2 x 27.9 cm
Please Come Back "Estevanico", 2013 Print on paper, 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm
Featuring
Edgar Arceneaux & Kurt Forman (Los Angeles, US), Maya Attoun (Tel Aviv, IL), Louis Cameron (New York, US), Dina Gadia (Manila, PH), Bayrol Jimenez (Oaxaca, MX), Rajkamal Kahlon (Berlin, DE), Nery Gabriel Lemus (Los Angeles, US), Temitayo Ogunbiyi (Lagos, NG), Marcelo Solá (Goiânia, BR), Abdelaziz Zerrou (Casablanca, MA)
Immigration is a special portfolio of The Poster Project. Ten artists from around the world were asked to produce a poster on the issue of immigration. As the discussion on immigration is picking up in the United States I thought it would be interesting to look at different perspectives on the issue. The artists address immigration from historical, poetic, humorous, and other points of view. Each artist has a page featuring their poster, a short bio, a link to their website, and a link to download their poster.
The Poster Project is a series of posters, 11 x 17 (27.9 cm x 43.2 cm), that I am producing and distributing for free through my website, www.louiscameron.com. The posters exist as PDF files that visitors can download and print. The Immigration portfolio is The Poster Project's first collaboration.
Edgar Arceneaux
Born in Los Angeles, California, US, 1972. Lives and works in Los Angeles, California, US
www.vielmetter.com/artists/edgar-arceneaux.html
Kurt Forman
Born in Coshocton, Ohio, US, 1965. Lives and works in Los Angeles, California, US.
In 1976 Richard Dawkin coined the word meme in his seminal text "The Selfish Gene." A term that sought to compare the transmission of cultural data through genetics by way of replication, competitive selection, and mutation. His thesis suggests that trends in culture propagate themselves virally, and spread from person to person like a pathogen. Dawkin's original concept of the meme has mutated on the Internet into meme producing websites and downloadable apps with a standardized format: image + text above + text below. Some of the most powerful memes feature Arnold Schwarzenegger, America's favorite Austrian immigrant. In essence, his own professional mutability has been transposed into his meme: Mr. Universe, Conan the Barbarian, T101 Cyborg, and Das Governator. In January 2013 Arceneaux and Forman founded BE. Beyond Entertainment, whos mission is to build media literacy through the use of serendipity. They are currently developing BE. into a web and TV series to launch this June on KCETLink, a national public television network. Episodes one and two are called "King Terminator" and "Prophet in the Shadow", which examines the connection between the Rodney King beating and Terminator 2 Judgement Day and the link between the film Halloween and the rise of Muslim extremists groups like Al-Qaeda.
Maya Attoun
Born in Jerusalem, IL, 1974. Lives and works in Tel-Aviv, IL.
http://givonartgallery.com/wordpress/?page_id=1671
Movement is the heart of immigration. It is the tension between dreaming the future and crushing it into the face of the present. The moment when idealism and romanticism change into politics. A capsule of human evolution.
Louis Cameron
Born in Columbus, Ohio, US, 1973. Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, US.
My poster alludes to undocumented immigrants' lives in the shadows of society as well as the United States' emphasis on border security. The landscape in the background is from a webcam that is part of a network set up for any individual to help "patrol" the border between the United States and Mexico remotely. The image and text in the foreground comes from a California highway warning sign one sees when traveling to Mexico.
Dina Gadia
Born in Pangasinan, PH, 1986. Lives and works in Manila, PH.
Customs to Launder in a Doppelganger Habitat, 2013
Culture is carried from one place to another. It evolves, downgrades, improves or rehabilitates. Sometimes it modifies permanently. Consciously or not, it can change one's personal identity as one adjusts or adapts to the place's conflicts and compatibilities. What interests me regarding the topic of immigration is how living in another country affects a person -- on how one sees himself, how people perceive him, and the difficulties one may face or experience. And if he has fully adapted to the lifestyle and culture of a certain place or country, will he bring with him that adapted culture when he goes back to his native land or to somewhere else? Will the old ways remain with his personality, or become permanently gone?
My poster is a collage of an old Philippine advertisement, outdated American history book and text from a comic book. The images may be stripped-down from its original form and context, but still identifiable as it still retains parts of the source and becomes a new whole regardless of its disjointed fragments.
Bayrol Jimenez
Born in Oaxaca, MX, 1984. Lives and works in Oaxaca, MX.
This poster belongs to a series of projects. For the first project I made a big drawing in the form of a mural in which I painted a scenario of violence, corruption and chaos. The second project involved cutting the drawings in several pieces, in order to disrupt the narrative; printing several posters with the images; and placing the posters in different positions. Both projects where exhibited in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris and the National Gallery of Ottawa in Canada.
I chose this poster for the Immigration portfolio because it represents some of the reasons why (im)migration takes place in several countries: war, destruction, hunger, corruption and military invasion.
In my poster we can see on the right the representation of power, the politician who sits in the president’s chair. He is wearing military pants and a costume, half military and half politician. On the left we see a death cow representing hunger, the background represents a war field, and on the bottom there is a blanket covering the head of a person representing death.
Rajkamal Kahlon
Born in Auburn, California, US, 1974. Lives and works in Berlin, DE.
The poster is quoted from the project Coloring Germany, exhibited in 2010 at NGBK in Berlin. The poster is an altered map of Germany where Beirut replaces Berlin and sites of international conflict can be found inside of German borders. Coloring Germany is an installation of paintings and altered coloring book pages selected from a contemporary coloring book produced by the German embassy for American children. Using the graphic language of the coloring book, Coloring Germany interrupts essentialized notions of the German body and landscape. Using strategies of irony and humor, the projects deflates notions of German purity, insisting on difference within constructions of European identities.
Nery Gabriel Lemus
Born in Los Angeles, California, US, 1977. Lives and works in Altadena, California, US.
Two Migratory Common loons, one Woman and Two Men in a River, 2013
I address the controversial topic of immigration by connecting images that encourage the viewer to formulate ideas about immigration. I attempt making these connections by indicating parallels between similar forms of travel; that of migrating birds and that of migrating immigrants. My intent is to explore metaphorical analogies of the social and political act of migration, thus forming a critical deconstruction of these ideas.
Temitayo Ogunbiyi
Born in Rochester, New York, US, 1984. Lives and works in Lagos, NG
I arrived in Dubai from Doha. Cheerful 2091098 in a pink and white uniform was my driver, the first and farthest away in one of three long lines. With the help of 2091098's giggling colleague, my box was tossed in the back of a mini van. We drove past that same colleague, and 2091098 called out, but she was not heard. "I wanted to tell her you are going to Al Barsha. You know, they laugh at me because I take you and they think you going to xx, where all the Nigerians stay. They don't like to go there because it's far. But you're going to Al Barsha! See! Even if you go to xx, I don't care. I take you because you my passenger." I guessed 2091098 was Filipino, but didn't ask. And I didn’t I tell her that I was an American citizen visiting Dubai for the first time. "You like Adele? I know you like Adele." All that followed was 'Skyfall'.
E kabo (Welcome)
Marcelo Solá
Born in Goiânia, BR, 1971. Lives and works in Goiânia, BR.
http://www.lucianacaravello.com.br/artistas/marcelo-sola/
"Solá’'s drawings concentrate the pulse of the contemporary metropolises, evincing symptoms of their chaotic and scattered nature. In the manner of street graffiti, they provide a close-up look at the disaggregation and the wandering textures of urban day-to-day life, with characteristic immediacy and indecisiveness."
Ligia Conongia
Abdelaziz Zerrou
Born in Casablanca, MA, 1982. Lives and works in Casablanca, MA.
www.abdelazizzerrou.wordpress.com/
Please Come Back "Estevanico", 2013
Emigration is a work on our common archive and that interests me.
To let the place where you are for another place: Stéphane le Noir or Mustapha Zemmouri on XVI century is the first african moroccan who went to United States, he was a slave of the expedition of the explorer
Pánfilo de Narváez.
For me this work is a memory of the past events and a way to remember him in a graphic register. The interest for that visual element is a wish of the artist for the universal symbolic figures featured by a better lisibility and visibility.