Write 1 paragraph of conclusion about this essay.
The international airport: a place for horizontal movement as citizens, expatriates, migrants, or immigrants; but what words are used to describe the people in these crossroads within one nation and moving to the next? Surely, it changes depending on where you are going, for what purpose, and what situation you are coming from. For example, someone who migrates from America to live in Australia might be called an expatriate, however, someone from Mexico or Iran moving to America may be called a migrant or immigrant. Why are certain identities placed on certain individuals, and how do they identify with the identities placed upon them? With our exhibit, "A Ticket to Migration," we answer this question, but also give context to why people migrate. The exhibit, which itself is migratory, addresses visual culture stereotypes in the mass media and social media of migrants, and provides another story from their perspective. By choosing self-portraits of migrant artists, existing stereotypes are being challenged with citation, the agency the author assumes by identifying as migrants, and the artists being the subject of their artwork as well as the artist.
The location of the airport forces people to rethink migration as they themselves are boarding a plane to somewhere, even if it is just for a short amount of time. The title is the first thing the audience sees and advertises a link between the ticket they hold in their hand and migration. Just lateral, they find images of newspaper headlines that speak to the generalized language surrounding migration. This exhibit provides a feminist intervention into the media-portrayal of migration, such as in the New York Times or BBC, since a search on either of these news sources will display the use of the term migration in conjunction with "crisis" and a language surrounding whether or not they are welcome into certain nations. In between the newspaper headlines and the artwork, is a social media video of people saying "I am an immigrant" in their preferred language. This provides a leeway into the individuals that claim the power within the result of moving. With visual culture on the outside of the exhibit, an audience member can read the story from either direction as they walk through the airport, and still receive a similar narrative. All of the artwork, which is limited to photography, video, and painting, is able to be displayed on the wall because of the nature of airports and hallways.
As the audience moves from visual culture to the artwork, they will collect new stories from the artists. The self-portraits of these artists reduce anonymity of the generalized "migrant" terminology, while still exemplifying the uniqueness of each individual person. The portraits by Toyin Odutola, Frida Kahlo, Ingrid Mwangi, and Aliza Nisenbaum demonstrate how ethnicity, identity, and culture become integrated, and even more robust, with a transnational life. Identity and stereotypes are increasingly challenged with the pieces by Sarah Maple, Lourdes Grobet, and Yolanda Lopez as they (sometimes literally) break out of the boxes that they find themselves placed in. Gonzalo Fuenmayor and Anna Bella Geiger recast a colonial identity of exploitation and voyeurism with the use of agency in their portraits, while Leticia Parente and Yolanda Andrade tell a story of why people migrate and what it means to live in an interdependent world. The citation of stereotyped identities combined with the agency of their own bodies in a "new frame... determines its new meaning and significance" (14). In addition, the agency of self-portraiture is a form of disidentification, as they are "identifying simultaneously with and against cultural stereotypes to rework them in different ways" (Latimer, 99). The artists blur the lines between expected identity and self-actualization by breaking away from but also identifying as a migrant. The art we have chosen to display together, created for a specific reason by the artist, will challenge migration being a crisis, and migrants always needing help.
The airport itself is a place of power in immigration, especially with the dynamic of TSA and the legal ability to enter into another country. The representation of migrants as individuals instead of intruders is especially useful in countries with the rhetoric of migration being bad, such as the United States. "A Ticket to Migration" deconstructs myths on the subject and the "race discourse is embedded in cultural institutions" such as art exhibits (Takamoto, 395). However, the multilingual and diverse artwork will speak to more than just the West, and more than one type of person will be able to identify with the artists, whether through culture, identity, or the fact that they are migrating. Since art was historically used to document the world as it is, this exhibit will shift the way that people view migration through location, citation, disidentification, and mobility.
Creating this exhibit has been an exciting and creative collaboration. In terms of how we determined and defined the roles different group members played, we discussed as a group each of our strengths and weaknesses. We ultimately decided that each person knows themselves and their strengths best, so we assigned roles based on what each person's strength was. For example, Larissa and Carly are strong writers whereas Tilia prefers editing and Alva has experience in managing images and designs. Additionally, we agreed as a group that if there were conflicts or tensions we would meet as a group to figure it out in person. If that is not possible, texting would be the next priority. While not many conflicts arose, we still met once a week to discuss our progress. As we worked together to research and find images for our project, we made sure to stop and to check that each of the images we individually found fit our common theme. It was challenging at times, with such a specific theme, to find artists and artworks, and found that much of our struggle lied in lack of availability and representation of these artists in the art world and internet. We were happy to agree on a project that fit all of our interests and the entire process of finding images has been pretty collaborative.