SOS BALKANROUTE - CHALLENGING BORDERS

Challenging Borders connects art, activism and remembrance culture, scrutinising the EU's current migration policy with a focus on the Balkan route, through which thousands of people flee every year – and many lose their lives. The reality at the EU's external borders is examined – but alternatives based on solidarity are also presented.

At the centre of the exhibition are people who are increasingly disappearing from our public consciousness due to the European policy of isolation and growing ignorance. Photographs, audio works, texts, projections and expansive installations form a mosaic of places on the Balkan route, such as Camp Lipa, of local helpers who are working on their own initiative and despite repression to help refugees, of the people on the run themselves and those who have arrived in Europe. The exhibition goes in depth  and is expanded through actions, art in public space and public talks with the artists, committed helpers and people who have fled across the Balkan route themselves.

In all of this, Challenging Borders takes a critical look at the imperial mechanisms of the European migration policy and shows that transnational solidarity is giving rise to new forms of resistance, fuelled by humanity, compassion and the vision of an open world beyond exclusion.