The motifs of leaving home and longing for home are as old as human history. On a personal level, fleeing or being forcibly displaced is a tragic event that leaves a mark on the rest of our lives, even if we manage to adapt well. “They don’t know that they’ll never really settle down. No, never. Some part of them will never be really there, a part of them will stay on in the old country never allowing them to really settle down elsewhere, to really grow roots,” writes the Lithuanian-American avant-garde film-maker Jonas Mekas in his memoir I Had Nowhere To Go. Mekas has captured his experiences as a refugee and his search for self in a new homeland through his experimental film-making.
“Artists’ film is a phenomenon that situates itself outside film industry formats but uses the (audio)visual means of expression offered by the moving image. In her book The Unwomanly Face of War, Svetlana Alexievich borrows the term ‘lens transmittance’ from optics to highlight the differences in the experiences of women and men at war. The greater the transmittance of a lens, the better its ability to record an image in poor lighting conditions. Hopefully, the films selected for the exhibition will help to illuminate those layers of homesickness and longing that are overshadowed by the great narratives of history,” explains Marge Monko.
*The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Marie Under’s poem “The Refugee”, written while she was in exile in Sweden.
Participating artists: Noor Abed, Paul Kuimet, Jonas Mekas, Marge Monko and Anna Scherbyna.
The exhibition is being curated by Marge Monko and designed by Karel Koplimets.
Thank you: Film-Makers Cooperative, Kaisa Maasik, Brigita Reinert, Eesti Kunstimuuseum, AS GoProperty, Valge Kuup OÜ
The exhibition is being produced in collaboration with the Photography Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts.
