Creativity Has No Borders: Art Against the Immigration Ban
In an executive order issued shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump closed U.S. borders to individuals from seven predominantly Muslim nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Positioned as a tactic of national security, this act has since come under intense scrutiny as an attempt at federal-level discrimination. Challenged in courts across the country, the Trump administration has since enacted a second order (dropping Iraq from the list among other things) but the Supreme Court has left the ban largely intact until it hears arguments in the case this October. Meanwhile, the effects of the ban have impacted every level of society: families have been separated, asylum seekers detained, and students and potential workers turned away. Within the art world, the “Muslim ban” has threatened the values of cross-cultural exchange that lie at its very core. Creativity knows no borders. In an increasingly globalized world, it is essential that artists (and scholars, authors, composers, choreographers, filmmakers, architects, and designers) from all nations and religions are welcome in the United States. How else will we fully experience the richness and complexity of cultural traditions and innovations from other regions around the world?
With its global constellation of museums and long history of internationalism, the Guggenheim recognizes and has championed true cultural exchange as a fundamental step in building the tolerance and respect for difference that is increasingly urgent in today’s volatile environment. In April of this year the museum initiated a nation-wide effort to produce amicus briefs in support of legal challenges to the administration’s ban on immigration. The briefs were signed by the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of Museums, the College Art Association, and more than a hundred art museums, all in recognition of the dangers inherent to closing our borders to the creative talents of other countries.
While art may seem to some like mere entertainment or, worse, a privilege that only the elite can access and enjoy, it is, in reality, a powerful educational tool that helps expand hearts and minds. In the history of this nation, artists from countless other countries have been welcomed regardless of their status—from invited guest to refugee seeking sanctuary. The story of American art can be told from the vantage point of immigration: from the country’s inception to the present day, artists arriving from elsewhere (whether by choice or not) have made major contributions to the intricately layered, utterly heterogeneous landscape that comprises our unique cultural heritage.
At certain critical junctures in American history, artists have come together to protest injustice and craft counter-narratives to the prevailing voices in government. This was certainly the case during the 1960s and ’70s when coalitions of artists formed to rally against the Vietnam War and to fight for civil rights. Likewise, during the 1980s, artists led the fight against the U.S. government’s homophobic dismissal of the AIDS crisis, which severely impacted the country’s population of cultural producers. Now, once again, artists have united to protest a social injustice. A group of nine international artists—Chitra Ganesh, Liam Gillick, Joan Jonas, Barbara Kruger, Julie Mehretu, Walid Raad, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Danh Vo, and Anicka Yi—have created an edition of posters from individual letters they wrote condemning the executive order and shared them with thirty art museums around the country. Their act of dissemination is also a bold provocation to museums, challenging them to state a position and demonstrate their commitment to diversity in the broadest sense.
The posters themselves (shown below) are stark, declarative statements—in the best tradition of agit-prop—each one demanding repeal of the ban. While the artists’ individual practices are richly visual and in some cases performative, their reversion here to pure text highlights the urgency of their message. Activism can, and has, taken many forms in the art world, but sometimes words speak louder than pictures. In 1966, during the escalation of the Vietnam War, the painter Ad Reinhardt contributed a poster to the Peace Tower erected in Los Angeles that read simply “NO WAR,” and conceded that “there are no effective paintings or objects one can make against the war. There’s a complete exhaustion of images.” In Trump’s America, the sustained assault on basic human and civil rights—the travel ban being only one example—calls for a decisive and unflinching response from the art community. The Guggenheim is proud to share these posters here and to stand with the artists who produced them.