Reflecting on ‘Traces of Displacement’ – The Whitworth

Harpreet Kaur

Writer and cultural consultant Harpreet Kaur discussed the exhibition ‘Traces of Displacement’ with Dr Leanne Green, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Whitworth until November 2023, and Professor Ana Carden-Coyne, director of the Centre for the Cultural History of War from The University of Manchester. On display at The Whitworth for nine months, finishing on 7 January 2024, it drew on the expertise of academics who, as part of a project entitled ‘Understanding Displacement Aesthetics’, worked with the Whitworth’s curator and a focus group of advisors with lived experience or heritage of displacement, to plan an exhibition revealing stories of persecution, creativity and resilience. The seven collaborating advisors with heritage of forced displacement are also creative practitioners and embarked on this project using their own artistic creations and interventions to share their experiences. Using painting, textile, poetry, storytelling, video and recorded conversation, these artists contributed key insights within the exhibition.

The themes and narratives which were presented in ‘Traces of Displacement’ are of great personal interest to me. Having studied sociology and international relations academically, and having a passion for socio-political art, an exhibition that uncovers stories of individuals who have experienced and survived through tragic circumstances that may otherwise go unheard, is of significant value to me. War and displacement have been a continuing theme in world histories. We cannot ignore the lives and suffering within and around us. We are all connected through these issues with neighbours, friends, family members, associates and strangers, whose lives, sometimes unknowingly to us, have been impacted by displacement.

Following British Colonialism in India, and the Partition of India, my mother’s family had to flee their land and home in Punjab, now a part of Pakistan. Their wealth and belongings were left behind and they boarded trains with just the clothes on their backs. My mother was not yet born but these circumstances have impacted her life, and the trauma generated runs through her body even now, and into mine. In varying degrees, we all carry traces of displacement, and I was delighted to have this opportunity to find out more about the process of bringing this exhibition together in Manchester.

Poignant themes emerged from the art works selected, including asylum rights versus detention; humanitarianism and the politics of rescue, and trauma and gendered experiences.

Harpreet Kaur: How and why was the idea for ‘Traces of Displacement’ born and what was the intention? Is the collection dictating the themes explored at The Whitworth, or current topical issues, or both?  

Ana Carden-Coyne: The subject is a burning issue in contemporary society and how we understand history. The stories shared and told are not just things of the past, but are very present. The idea was born out of a collaboration with the University of Manchester and a research project; understanding displacement aesthetics and making change in the gallery with refugees, migrants and host communities. This was a three-year AHRC funded project working with a team of researchers within different disciplines; social history, art history, art theory and curation. The collection doesn’t dictate anything as such, but we thought about what is in the collection that relates to forced displacement, migration, especially as this is so important for Manchester that has such a long-standing history of migration, and is host to many refugee and asylum-seeking communities. We wanted to connect the collection to the constituency, the people that live in the city.

Leanne Green: There are 60,000 objects in the Whitworth collection; textile, drawing, print and wallpaper. We used the research to tell stories about displacement through the art that is there. It’s incredibly challenging as it requires specialist knowledge, so it was really important to have a historian, an art curator and bringing together those different knowledges. The research team did not have lived experience of forced displacement, so we brought together a focus group comprised of people from different communities in Manchester, and worked with them to decide what to use from the collection for the exhibition.

AC-C: We worked as a team for a long time doing deep research. You can’t just type ‘displacement’ or ‘migrant’ and do a search as this is not a word that was used in cataloguing in institutions. This is a big challenge. Working with creative advisors was embedded in the work and process over a long period and how they responded to pieces in very individual ways, so that they could tell individual stories of their own which were integrated into the exhibition. We worked with an advising group who are artists in their own right; a film maker, a video artist, a curator, a heritage expert, and a textile artist.

HK: Why do topics such as forced displacement matter for contemporary art? Does art have a role in making change, and/or being a space to present nuanced perspectives? Why is this important to the Whitworth, your mission and your audiences?

AC-C: The exhibition presents art, research and storytelling about complex ideas about migration. Most people access that information via the media which is a distorted perspective. Arts institutions can bring out stories in a way that the media doesn’t, using collections and working with artists. The arts can make the stories more relevant and palatable, more personal and insightful, generating deeper understanding.

LG: Many forms of art have been presented in the exhibition space about people that are displaced and are about ‘representation’, and offer a counter narrative to what is seen in the media. This provides an opportunity to find empathy in audiences. An artist has done photography workshops with people detained indefinitely or in a state of unknowing, to bring these stories out. The pictures have also been published in The Guardian so have a dual purpose in truth telling, showing the true conditions for newly arrived people in the UK.

AC-C: The media can’t go into a detention centre because they are not invited but artists can gain access because they are working with people that have such a precarious existence, in a prison-like existence. A person fled their country to avoid persecution. It brings home just how unjust the system is. Artists can open a deep window and provoke questions for audiences that are hard to fully understand if you just read about it. Artists can work between mainstream culture and those who are marginalised.

LG:  The role of a gallery is also to hold space for different opinions where we can disagree, giving views space and freedom. The exhibition provides a platform for hidden stories and to the voiceless. The Whitworth always engages with current urgencies in society and that shapes our programme. The Whitworth is interested in how art operates in the world, and has looked at this topic before and it will continue to in the future.

HK: This is an interesting collaboration between academics, curators, artists and people with lived experience. How were narratives shaped and how did the project approach equality of voices and perspectives being shared? Did you achieve this and how?

AC-C: The themes and narratives took many months to emerge as the research is complex and hard to do. It took time and money as we paid our experts, community advisers and artists as we should. We can’t take their knowledge and pretend it’s not worth anything. We built trust and listened to each other, learned new, unique perspectives. There were different opinions and perspectives on issues. Two artists had a different reaction to an artwork of a shipwreck of Syrian refugees leaving on boats. One artist said they did not want to see boats in the exhibition and that they were sick of seeing them and for the conversation about asylum seekers being limited to [the slogan] ‘stop the boats.’ The other artist felt the conversation needs to be had and to be more visceral, and made more real and to tell people exactly how it is. The methodology for the project was dialogue and debate bringing different opinions together so the conversation they had was recorded. You can listen to it in the exhibition, it’s placed next to the artwork. People with lived experience of forced migration are not all the same. The media can flatten out the picture of who these people are. In the gallery we are giving them a platform, adding more layers to their voices.

LG: As a curator it’s the hardest show I have ever curated. We did not go in with pre-determined ideas of themes and events. We didn’t know what was in the collection and there were no obvious references of displacement so we literally went through boxes of art. We looked at the collection for a year and this was only possible because of the funding we had. It’s also difficult for audiences to experience and navigate the exhibition as it’s a compendium of stories. It is partial and full of gaps because this is also the nature of the collection. But it does tell incredibly powerful stories.

AC-C: One creative advisor wanted to look at the Transatlantic slave trade as they were struck by the work, so they added that as a topic. Enslaved people’s activism was covered, and not just going down the road of white saviourism. This came out of the focus group and their leadership.

LG: Enslavement is the biggest example of forced displacement in history and the wealth of Manchester is built on the Transatlantic slave trade. We didn’t re-hash narratives about white abolitionism. We found two portraits to present this from the collection to explore the activism of enslaved people and shared their stories.

AC-C: This research project was a laboratory and testing ground. This approach could be used by other institutions, and would be an interesting next step.

HK: What were the key challenges unique to this project, and what were the opportunities?

LG: The art collection database of over 60,000 pieces of work was very difficult to navigate. Searching it was one of the biggest challenges. We have now added key words and narratives for artworks the group looked at from the collection to the database for the future on ‘forced displacement’.

There was the emotional challenge of bringing people with lived experience of forced displacement to an institution. With their brilliant specialist knowledge, they have had traumatic experiences and were all generous and beautiful in how they shared their stories… magic happened in exhibition planning meetings. We all connected deeply: it wasn’t just a curatorial mission, but embodied and raw. Some of the poetry written in response to the work was really powerful. We did not want to be extractive in any way but let artists in the focus group bring what they felt comfortable with, creating safe spaces for them, and listening and learning from them. It was both a challenge and an opportunity.  

AC-C: We will be connected as friends forever, there was incredible connection and bonding. We are still in touch and will always explore opportunities to work with them again.

HK: You have scheduled some events alongside the exhibition including mandla’s recent performance, as british as a watermelon*. What has been the impact, purpose and popularity of these? Do events help bring exhibitions to life?

LG: The events enabled us to bring different audiences in to engage on their own terms, for example, a long partnership with Afrocats who work with children and young people. We had a full day event with them including food, dance classes, and talks. The focus group members have given tours of the exhibition, we had an academic conference, and a live performance from one of the artists. We engaged different audiences through the programme that might not usually come in. The Whitworth civic engagement team work with new arrivals in temporary accommodation, we go to the accommodation and they come to the Whitworth too. As a result, The Whitworth has been named as an official gallery of sanctuary, the first one in the North West. That’s testament to the work of the civic engagement team and to this project.

HK: If you had an unlimited budget, what would the next phase of ‘Traces’ look like and why?

AC-C: We would work with more communities and do more outreach. We worked with seven people and we want to work with a wider group.

LG: To make projects in Manchester with artists and displaced communities, to expand on what came out of the project. To work with and support more artists from displaced backgrounds. Expanding the commissions programme is also a key aim.

HK: Are there specific pieces in the exhibition that speak to you personally, connect with how you relate to the topic?

LG: Mounira al Solh – Seven pieces of art [I Strongly Believe in the Right to be Frivolous, 2012-ongoing] which are a part of a larger series of sketches of forcibly displaced people. Al Solh chats to people in a studio or cafés and gets to know them. Her practice and work show humanity and kindness to counteract the hostility in society to people who are seeking sanctuary. She also has lived experience of displacement and has been doing these sketches since 2012. She is an international Lebanese living between Amsterdam and Beirut. The work is made on yellow legal paper speaking to the bureaucracy of the legal process of seeking sanctuary, and individual stories of displaced people that are not a homogenous group. The media shows us stereotypes of people so it’s great to have art works sharing a truer picture.

AC-C: Otti Berger – Berger was a designer from the Bauhaus and came to live in Manchester before the second world war to work for a British firm in the late 1930s. She did amazing fabric designs, was Jewish, and from Vienna. She could not get a visa to go to the US and could not get further work in the UK. She was partially deaf and didn’t speak English, and was unmarried. She did not have the anchors you need to survive as a talented young woman, or have social capital to survive as a refugee so went back to Europe. Soon after, Berger was deported to Auschwitz and died there, she was murdered. This is the story of what happens when your new home won’t let you stay and resettling backfires and you go back home and die. It’s what happens when you don’t have asylum. It speaks to me as a historian and why these stories matter right now. We need to hold onto the 1951 convention and 1967 protocol, as it is under threat.

* Zimbabwean-born writer and performer mandla presented an excerpt of as british as a watermelon, a colourful and sensory live performance that explored childhood memories of migration and asylum and the journey towards reclaiming power, on Tuesday 24 October 2023. This performance was organised as part of the then current exhibition ‘Traces of Displacement’ at The Whitworth.