Exhibition and research project
March 8–June 16, 2025
Berlin 10557
Germany
T +49 30 397870
F +49 30 3948679
info@hkw.de
Public discourse and politics are increasingly characterized by fear—with Germany being one of the starkest examples of this. Fear over perceived threats to established, often hegemonic, ways of seeing the world from those respective narrow local contexts. As such, the exhibition Musafiri: Of Travellers and Guests speaks from the present moment, taking into account current manifestations of much older tensions around who is welcomed and who is not, which perspectives are welcomed and which are not, and who gets to decide on these limits. It constitutes an urgent plea to acknowledge and assert the polyphonic worlds brought together by the experience of those who have moved past their points of origin.
The Arabic word musafir resonates with stunning phonetic consistency across languages that now mark strikingly different cultural spaces, from Romanian to Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Swahili, Kazakh, Uygur, and Malay, among others, in a vast, uninterrupted geography. While the original meaning and in most of these languages is that of a ‘traveller’, in Turkish and Romanian it has come to designate a ‘guest’, a position that is special and most welcomed. In Romanian, in particular, musafir resonates within the privilege of the domestic realm, a word mostly reserved for a guest who is received into one’s home. The exhibition is thus rooted in efforts to make possible a world where travellers arrive and are received as guests. It follows worlds as they have been braided by intrepid travellers, by unwillingly displaced individuals and communities in history, as well as by the growing movements of migration of today, worlds that open when one leaves the familiar confines of one’s corner of the world, and the many artistic conversations that are born on the cusps of these encounters.
Throughout the exhibition’s many propositions, conversations, and questions, there is one that might perhaps be the most important one of all, speaking of many quests and struggles. That is whether we can still hope that the musafiri will one day, somewhere, encounter a world where the power of a host to decide who is a perpetual musafir is shattered and confined to a chronicle of times passed.
With contributions by: Ulf Aminde, Alibay Bapanov, Sonia E. Barrett, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Musquiqui Chihying, Narcisa Chindoy, Chong Yan Chuah, Choy Ka Fai, Julien Creuzet, Ena de Silva, Roy Dib, Bekhbaatar Enkhtur, Aboubakar Fofana, Simryn Gill, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Yun-Fei Ji, Sachiko Koshikoku & Akinori Nakatani & Massao Okinaka & Yuji Tamaki (conceived and assembled by Yudi Rafael), Lawrence Lemaoana, Idas Losin, Ana Lupas, Gail Mabo, Maria Madeira, Mohammad Din Mohammad, Carlos “Marilyn” Monroy, Diane Severin Nguyen, Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang, Jimmy Ong, Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo (known as Madame Zo), Anne Samat, Citra Sasmita, Joar Songcuya, Simon Soon, Nádia Taquary, Robel Temesgen, Ryan Villamael, Ocean Vuong
Partner
In collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation—Delegation in France as part of the PARTENARIATS GULBENKIAN programme to promote the Portuguese art scene in European institutions.
Contact
Jan Trautmann, Pressesprecher, Lead Communications Officer, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 10557 Berlin
T + 49 (0) 30 397 87 157 / presse@hkw.de
