Migration has always been a strategy used by living beings to adapt to changing environmental conditions. However, today, human-induced climate disruptions are occurring so rapidly that less mobile or immobile species struggle to adapt, while those capable of movement are migrating at an increasing pace.
Environmental degradation has long been a major factor driving migration worldwide. Population vulnerability to natural hazards is not a recent phenomenon.
How can we picture other ways to be in the world, without racism or discrimination? In line with the “right to opacity” advocated by Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, the artists featured in this section explore forms of resistance to identity-based categorization. Their works invite us to think of the world as a fabric of relations, where identities are constructed, transformed, and remain in constant motion.
Just because rights are set down in law does not always mean that they can be exercised in reality. For some people, access to rights is held back by discriminatory situations that can be repeated: unequal educational orientation, refused housing, difficulty accessing health care, discrimination in hiring, police checks based on appearance. These obstacles are not isolated cases. They are part of enduring mechanisms.
From a historical and legal point of view, slavery and colonisation did not just establish a relationship of political and economic domination. They also produced images, narratives and categories, ways of classifying, ranking and representing peoples, that engendered the systems whose effects are still felt today. This is what may be called the “coloniality of the visible”, or ways of seeing that are inherited from the colonial order, still present in the collective imagination and in our institutions. Unravelling the order of the view is not about wiping out the past or accusing the present but seeking to reveal and shift the frames of analysis. The artists presented here have been working from the contemporary to de-construct these representations that remain active in our imaginations and our practices. Making these filters perceptible involves broadening the view; in other words, accepting to allow the fullness of lives to be seen.
Through the lens of contemporary art and informed by scientific research, Origins. Artists perspectives on racism and discrimination explores one of the most powerful and enduring drivers of discrimination in our societies. Whether real or perceived, “origin” remains a source of exclusion and stigmatization in everyday life. Often subtle and overlooked, this reality nonetheless shapes both individual lives and collective trajectories from an early age.
The Poisson Lune summer terrace welcomes you to the forecourt of the Palais for a 6th festive season dedicated to sport. Musical and cultural surprises, a change of scenery and idleness are all on the program! The terrace is open from Tuesday to Sunday, so you can enjoy summer in Paris with family and friends.
For the first time, the Palais de la Porte Dorée is presenting a global exhibition across all its spaces, including the museum and the aquarium : Migrations & Climate . More than 200 documentary photographs, works of art, some never-before-seen, testimonies, videos, infographics, and installations explore the connections between human migration dynamics, as well as broader movements in the living world, and climate disruption.