Mere Phantoms: Shadows Without Borders explores memories and migration at Surrey Art Gallery
Interactive shadow installation draws from artists’ journeys to Athens and Istanbul, as well as visitors’ own cut-out creations
Post Sponsored by Surrey Art Gallery
Mere Phantoms, Shadows Without Borders, Athens, 2018. Photo by Leila Shifteh and Harun Yasin Tuna
This summer, Surrey Art Gallery will open a major participatory shadow installation that sheds light on human displacement and the refugee crisis.
Mere Phantoms: Shadows Without Borders runs June 18 to August 14, launching with a free artist talk on June 19 from 2 pm to 5 pm with artists Maya Ersan and Jaimie Robson. (Pre-registration required on their website).
Montreal-based Ersan and Robson, of Mere Phantoms, use shadow play to explore the relationship between memory and architecture, people and place.
Some of the work in this exhibition comes from Shadows Without Borders, the duo’s 2018 mobile interactive shadow installation that travelled to refugee camps, squats, and settlements in Athens and Istanbul. Mere Phantoms led paper cutting and shadow workshops and play sessions with children and families in these communities.
Visitors will also be able to engage with a 3.5-by-3.5-metre shadow projection tent and custom-made flashlights. Don’t miss a display of photographs from a night of shadow play at an Athens squat, as well as a seven-minute video documenting the sessions in Athens and Istanbul. Both the photographs and video were created in collaboration with filmmakers Leila Shifteh and Harun Yasin Tuna.
The artists have made new paper-cut tableaux especially for this latest edition of Shadows Without Borders at Surrey Art Gallery.
During the exhibition, visitors can engage with the artwork by adding their own cut-outs to the ever-growing installation. Guests can pick up a flashlight to animate the intricate paper tableaux imbued with stories from communities both near and far.
You can find more information here.
Post sponsored by Surrey Art Gallery.