As a community responsive arts organization, we have been exploring the role that arts organizations, and indeed our own, can play in addressing the increasingly inhumane immigration policies that are doing harm to our neighbors, colleagues and friends, in the places where we live and work. While we may not have all the answers, we remain committed to building strong relationships, putting values into practice, and leveraging the resources we are able to access.

Our inquiry began in the Fall of 2018 with InResponse: Immigration, a community-centered art, education and engagement platform. Over the course of a year, we are developing a series of panel discussions, workshops, community-based gatherings and an online website that brings into one forum the creative work being done by artists, activists and organizations at the intersection of arts and immigration. The series will culminate as a site-specific exhibition in the Fall of 2019.

Visit Outside the Lines:

The series began with a call from NYC-based arts organizations to the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, seeking  pathways of engagement and knowledge to protect some of the most vulnerable immigrant communities in New York City. InResponse starts by acknowledging that we are on the unceded territory of the Lenape people, and explores avenues for action toward a more humane immigration system: one that values immigrants, their day-to-day safety, their lived experience and the histories they bring with them. NLE will develop a series of programs across New York City exploring themes including detention and deportation, the history and future of the sanctuary movement, how to support safe spaces in our neighborhoods, and understanding the full room we have to maneuver as individuals and non-profit cultural organizations.

Dedicated to social change through civic engagement, knowledge building and resource sharing, InResponse is organized in partnership with Art Space Sanctuary and a decentralized coalition of cultural organizers and creators. The series will culminate in an exhibition of artists whose work considers the safety and support of immigrant communities, and envisions a future where all of us are able to live lives of dignity and freedom.

Image:

What Can We Do? Immigration Summit for Cultural Organizations, photo Julia Hickey.

Cinthya Santos-Briones, from the series Living in Sanctuary. Courtesy of the artist.

Richard Mosse: Incoming, The Curve, Installation view, Barbican Centre, London, England, February 15 – April 23, 2017.Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo by Tristan Fewings.

Scherezade Garcia working on The Liquid Highway ©Scherezade Garcia.

Ronny Quevedo, no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime, 2017, Queens Museum, Photo: Argenis Apolinario.

Screenshoot of Outside the lines online resource archiving.

Maria Gaspar, Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall, site intervention at Cook County Department of Corrections, 2018. Photo credit: Sarah J. Rhee.