Yale Center for British Art

Migrating Worlds brings together work by eight of Britain’s leading film and video artists in the first exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art dedicated exclusively to the moving image.

Featuring Theo Eshetu (b. 1958), Isaac Julien (b. 1960), Rosalind Nashashibi (b. 1973), Charlotte Prodger (b. 1974), Zina Saro-Wiwa (b. 1976), Zineb Sedira (b. 1963), John Smith (b. 1952), and Alia Syed (b. 1964), Migrating Worlds foregrounds work that addresses the relationship between people and place, especially the effects of dislocation incurred by the movement of individuals, both forced and elective. Through a common emphasis on nature and its landforms, whether urban topography, wilderness, or the surfaces and depths of the seas, these artists address questions of identity and place, exploring the colonial exploitation of peoples and the environment, and their contemporary legacies in our ceaselessly changing world.

Eshetu, Julien, Nashashibi, Prodger, Saro-Wiwa, Sedira, Smith, and Syed have each played a role in the integration of time-based media practices into the gallery and museum, and their work offers a diverse range of methods of filmmaking, from the visually poetic to the conceptual. While their approaches to moving image differ, they all offer contemporary insights into British life and culture that question the definition of identity and the sense of belonging—one that extends to encompass rich cultural histories and visuality.

Migrating Worlds: The Art of the Moving Image in Britain is curated by Matthew Hargraves, Chief Curator of Art Collections at the Center. The exhibition coincides with the release of Artists’ Moving Image in Britain Since 1989 (Fall 2019), edited by Erika Balsom, Sarah Perks, and Lucy Reynolds, and published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British At and Yale University Press.