The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) 2020:
Here, Together!

The Imminent Arrival
Curator: Katya Grokhovsky
Curatorial Advisors: Mary Annunziata, Allison Cannella,
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand 

October 16th 2020 - December 18th 2020 Artists: Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Shay Arick, Irja Bodén, Federico Cuatlacuatl, Firoz Mahmud, Abena Motaboli, Rehab El Sadek, Buket SAVCI, Joo Yeon Woo, Minoosh Zomorodinia  Online
virtual2020.theimmigrantartistbiennial.com

The Imminent Arrival is a group exhibition, which presents the work of ten U.S based immigrant artists with diverse backgrounds, who explore the notions of identity politics, cultural misrepresentation, personal narratives and inevitability of assimilation. Employing numerous mediums and materials, including ceramics, video, photography, drawing, painting, installation and social practice, the works migrate through disciplines in a fluid manner, evoking expanded fields of contemporary practices imbued with traditional techniques, histories and ancestral knowledge, ultimately arriving at amplification of often underserved voices

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Bianca Abdi-Boragi Barbary Fig 
 
The Barbary fig, or the prickly pear cactus, is found in Algeria, in Northern Africa.  “A sweet fruit, surrounded with thorns. Like childhood amidst war.’’ R. Balun.  

In Abdi-Boragi’s Barbary Fig, Ghalia, a mature woman living in France, has a phone conversation with her daughter, who asks her to travel to Great Kabylie-a region from Northern Algeria-to visit the grave of Ghalia's mother.  Ghalia categorically refuses.  She remembers fragments of her childhood as part of the Kabyle tribe during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) against the French colonial empire, and remembers also one of the many abandoned villages in which she and her mother managed to survive until life became impossible.  

​The Kabyles are an ethnic group indigenous from Northern Africa today still living in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.  This short film, in a sense, depicts the path of an exile, back through the path of memory.
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