_{Image courtesy of The Stedelijk Museum}

CARLOS MOTTA: THE CROSSING
The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
From 16 September 2017 to 21 January 2018

The Stedelijk Museum presents Carlos Motta: The Crossing, a newly commissioned two-part installation of videos and objects by New York-based, Colombian artist Carlos Motta (1978, Bogota).

_{Image courtesy of The Stedelijk Museum}

In The Crossing, Carlos Motta presents video portraits of eleven LGBTQI refugees who speak about their experiences before, during and after the exodus from their homelands to the Netherlands. Their touching accounts demonstrate the challenges of living amid homophobia and transphobia, in cultures where repression and discrimination make the open expression of non-normative genders and sexualities practically impossible. The exclusion, intimidation and abuse experienced by these refugees also took place during their asylum seeking processes in Dutch refugee camps, where they were humiliated and bullied by other refugees and often failed to obtain the protection they sought from Dutch authorities.

_{Image courtesy of The Stedelijk Museum}

The Crossing’s subjects hail from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, and Pakistan. Directly addressing the camera in confessional style, they discuss their personal histories of persecution, their perilous sea and land crossings, and their encounters with Dutch refugee policies. The refugees narratives are defined by their need to escape war and political and social oppression, and particularly to escape the common and deep-rooted discrimination LGBTQ people continue to face throughout the world.

_{Image courtesy of The Stedelijk Museum}

Carlos Motta selected the interviewees with the help of the Amsterdam organisation Secret Garden, which campaigns to improve the life of LGBTQI refugees, supports their asylum applications, and helps them find their way in the Netherlands. The artist first met a larger group of refugees in Amsterdam in August 2016, and recorded the interviews with eleven refugees in an Amsterdam film studio in February 2017.

more. www.stedelijk.nl