Kurtis works from experience – his own, as he lived as an illegal immigrant for five years – and that of individuals he has met in the course of his wanderings. With his use of coloured filters and other graphic subterfuges, he charts the obliteration of identity and its close corollary, the dehumanisation of the gaze on the move.
One news bulletin follows on another’s heels, showing aerial views of masses of people packed into drifting boats, invariably tiny and indistinct. A few dots on the sea, a few statistics on a table, and that’s about all there is on the ‘migrant’ issue. Where they come from and whom they are is generally excluded from the media coverage as well as the reasons for their exile, which are all blurred into the word ‘migrant’. Individuals exist only as part of the human tide that they have no choice but to become part of.
In the light of the situation at the time of the exhibition Christophe Guye Galerie and Seba Kurtis decided to donate parts of the proceeds of this exhibition to the Schweizerische Flüchtlingshilfe (Swiss Refugee Council). They were able to fund fifteen german classes for asylum seekers.
