I Am a Native Foreigner in Stedelijk Museum

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is mounting a series of exhibitions that explore different aspects of the theme migration. “I Am a Native Foreigner” examines migration by focusing on the museum’s collection: what are artists views on migration, and how do they visualise it in their work? This collection presentation considers the effects of migration on artists both past and present, and reveals how they dealt with, and depicted, the impact of displacement. The title “I Am a Native Foreigner” is taken from a statement made by the Mexican artist Ulises Carrión (1941-1989), who settled in Amsterdam in the 1970s.

The work in “I Am a Native Foreigner” ranges from photographs of Dutch immigrants disembarking at New York’s Ellis Island around 1900, and Surinamese-born Dutch who made their home in the Bijlmer in Amsterdam southeast in the late ‘70s, to more recent images of refugees off the coast of southern Spain.

More information can be found on the website of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Photography: Gert Jan van Rooij