Bordered Miles - the walk to Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre
Published: 14 August 2023
Artist Iman Tajik stages 'Bordered Miles', a day-long group walk from the University of Glasgow to Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre in solidarity with those who have suffered under immigration policies.
Bordered Miles
Saturday 23 September 2023
Free event - booking required
This September, artist Iman Tajik will stage Bordered Miles, a day-long group walk from the centre of Glasgow to Dungavel House Immigration Removal Centre south of the city. An extension of Iman Tajik’s ongoing interest in the concept of the border, the walk invites participants to pay close attention to the movement of bodies as a fundamental right, and to think about the political and social systems that prevent people from being able to exercise that right.
Starting on the University of Glasgow campus, participants will walk from the West End of Glasgow to the outskirts of the city, passing through industrial estates and the Scottish countryside. It concludes as participants arrive at the Immigration Removal Centre to raise and fly a flag made by Tajik out of an emergency safety blanket as a symbol of reclaiming that political space.
Friends and colleagues are invited to join the day-long group walk in solidarity with those who have crossed and tried to cross borders on a journey to a better life.
Iman Tajik is an Iranian artist and photographer based in Glasgow, Scotland. He works across lens-based media, sculpture, installations and performance. Through these various mediums, he ’performs the border’, inspired by personal experiences of crossing geographical borders and socio-political barriers to insist on the right to freedom of movement. Tajik’s politically-engaged work features in current exhibition Unravelling Times at the Hunterian Art Gallery.
For media information contact Rachel Hughes rachel.hughes@glasgow.ac.uk/ 07794292775.
Notes to Editors.
The Hunterian Contemporary Art Programme
The oldest public museum in Scotland, with collections spanning arts, sciences and humanities, The Hunterian is at the forefront of university museums around the world. Since it opened at the University of Glasgow in 1807, The Hunterian has been an invaluable academic and community resource. It is committed to becoming a more meaningful place for more diverse audiences.
The Hunterian’s contemporary art programme responds to and interacts with The Hunterian collections, spaces and histories to make new connections and to reflect people, ideas and stories. The Hunterian collection’s historic foundation is a repository of knowledge that materialises the problematic history of Western society and its fundamentally colonial and capitalist underpinnings. Taking this as a point of departure and critical reflection, The Hunterian’s contemporary art programme seeks to interrogate the institution’s genealogy, and to introduce different perspectives into its spaces.
Working with a wide range of artists on acquisitions, commissions, exhibitions and events, our contemporary art programme allows The Hunterian to find new ways of using our historic collections to understand the contemporary world.
The Hunterian’s University context creates room for intellectual inquiry and a process of learning and experimentation. As one of the few purpose-built art galleries in Glasgow — a city renowned for its large art community—The Hunterian offers a space in which work by emerging local artists and more established international practitioners can be exhibited to wide and diverse audiences, enabling connection, reflection and experimentation.
Since 2017, The Hunterian has featured solo exhibitions by artists such as Neil Clements, Ilana Halperin, Alex Impey, Ulrike Ottinger, Elizabeth Price and Jimmy Robert. Group exhibitions have included works by, among others: Sarah Browne; Phil Collins; Tacita Dean; Manthia Diawara; Andrew Kerr; Nalini Malani; Jade Montserrat; Shahryar Nashat; Otobong Nkanga; Charlotte Prodger; Carol Rhodes; Margaret Salmon; Simon Starling; Corin Sworn. The Hunterian has also supported projects with John Gerrard (a major outdoor video installation for COP26), Elisabeth Schilling (a week of dance performances and a symposium in 2019). They have undertaken collaborations with other arts organisations, including The Common Guild, Goethe Institute Glasgow, Glasgow International, Film and Video Umbrella, Leeds Arts University, and the Roberts Institute of Art, all of which have brought benefits through co-funding and knowledge exchange.
The Hunterian has commissioned new works from artists including: Claire Barclay, Alex Impey, Neil Clements, Minty Donald & Nick Millar, Louise Hopkins, and Georgina Starr (in partnership with Art Fund, FVU and GI). We have received funding awards from VNXXCAS 2021, CAS Rapid Response Fund 2020, Art Fund Moving Image Fund for Museums (2018), Henry Moore Institute (2018), the Kingdom of the Netherlands Embassy (2021).
Open Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 5pm.
About the exhibition
Unravelling Times
12 May - 15 October 2023
Hunterian Art Gallery
Admission Free
The first new contemporary art exhibition at The Hunterian in 2023, Unravelling Times features works by pioneering experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes which have recently been acquired for The Hunterian collection through a Freelands Art Fund Acquisition award. These range from the influential work Pictures on Pink Paper from 1982, a feminist exploration of gendered systems of value and power, to more recent works that track the social and political implications of neo-liberalism in the UK and internationally. It is the most significant acquisition of works by Rhodes in Scotland to date.
The exhibition makes connections between the themes and formal approaches in Rhodes's works and the practices of three Glasgow-based artists: Anne-Marie Copestake, Francis McKee and Iman Tajik. Across the works included, feminist experimental filmmaking, strategies for representing political protest, and experiences of migration come into focus as critical concerns of the past forty years in Rhodes's work and that of artists who share her commitment to radical practice.
About the artist
Iman Tajik is an Iranian artist and photographer based in Glasgow, Scotland. His politically-engaged artistic practice uses photography, performance, sculpture and installation to articulate the artist’s own experience of migration and border-crossing in relation to wider social realities. Throughout Tajik’s work, the concept of ‘performing the border’ is a central concern, underpinned by an understanding that borders are experienced in relation to power structures and inequalities. Iman Tajik founded the Who is? Project in collaboration with Jonas Jessen Hansen in 2017. Who Is? Project has been created as a space to open conversation surrounding the current migrant crisis and the rise of nationalism.
First published: 14 August 2023