When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration Through Contemporary Art

Insightful and interdisciplinary, this book considers the movement of people around the world and how contemporary artists contribute to our understanding of it

In this timely volume, artists and thinkers join in conversation around the topic of global migration, examining both its cultural impact and the culture of migration itself. Individual voices shed light on the societal transformations related to migration and its representation in 21st-century art, offering diverse points of entry into this massive phenomenon and its many manifestations.

The featured artworks range from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, video, and sound art, and their makers--including Isaac Julien, Richard Mosse, Reena Saini Kallat, Yinka Shonibare MBE, and Do Ho Suh, among many others--hail from around the world. Texts by experts in political science, Latin American studies, and human rights, as well as contemporary art, expand upon the political, economic, and social contexts of migration and its representation. The book also includes three conversations in which artists discuss the complexity of making work about migration.

Amid worldwide tensions surrounding refugee crises and border security, this publication provides a nuanced interpretation of the current cultural moment. Intertwining themes of memory, home, activism, and more, When Home Won’t Let You Stay meditates on how art both shapes and is shaped by the public discourse on migration.

Published in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

Exhibition Schedule:

Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
(October 23, 2019-January 26, 2020)

Minneapolis Institute of Art
(February 22-May 24, 2020)

Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University
(February 5-May 30, 2021)

Ruth Erickson is the Mannion Family Curator and Eva Respini is the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.