Carlos Motta: The Crossing

The New York based artist (1978, Bogota) presents his newly commissioned two-part installation of videos and objects. 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.