Baggage: We've all got it, whether it's literal luggage we're packing up for a trip or a move, or the emotional baggage we bring to our relationships. The group exhibition "Baggage Claims" at the Weisman Art Museum smartly plays on both meanings, making for a multi-layered and provocative collection of art.
This predominantly sculptural show could've gone overboard with too many actual suitcases, but the curators add depth with four short videos.
The show is something of a who's-who in contemporary art today. Curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox, the collaborative duo who call themselves c2 (curatorsquared), it includes 17 international artists, ranging from young talents to art-world familiars like Andrea Zittel. Weisman senior curator Diane Mullin has compactly presented this show in the museum's two front galleries.
The exhibition itself has been in and out of airports. It began at the Orlando Museum of Art in the fall of 2017, then traveled to two colleges before arriving at the University of Minnesota's Weisman — its fourth, and final, destination.
The show unpacks timely themes of immigration, displacement and border crossings, but it doesn't neglect the more emotional or the strictly conceptual, either. One of the most powerful works is Taysir Batniji's video "Transit" (2004), which begins with still photos separated only by the clicking sound of a slide show, showing people passed out on couches. But this isn't a delayed flight — these are images taken surreptitiously at the border crossing between Egypt and Israeli-occupied Gaza. In some moments the screen goes black, suggesting the metaphor of not-knowingness during this treacherous journey.
Joel Ross' "Room 28" (1997), a sculptural work, is surprising in another way. Several stacks of approximately 40 vintage suitcases, some with bed springs and insulation popping out of them, others locked shut, are arranged on the floor. The contents of these suitcases were ripped from a motel room where the artist experienced a terrible breakup. Upon his departure, he left a check for the damages — his emotional baggage.
There's more contained heaviness in Yoan Capote's "Nostalgia" (2004-16). It's a suitcase that the artist used to pack up his belongings upon leaving Cuba. Standing open and upright, it now contains a wall-like chunk of brickwork he found in New York, a nod to the passage of time and the loneliness of his separation.
Similarly, Mohamad Hafez's "A Refugee Nation" (2015) is a collection of found objects rescued from the artist's hometown in Syria and arranged inside an antique typewriter case. The work is embedded with audio of a refugee, as a way to humanize this experience.
