SADE KAHRAI Am Globalism 27.5.2006 – 18.6.2006

Internationalism, cultural diversity and globalism express our current lifestyle and trend in social policy. As a well-travelled Westerner, my actions sustain this ideal. A friend of mine once said that I am globalism. Although he was only referring to my inclination to travel widely from culture to culture, the comment provoked an intensely defensive response from me. For many, globalization represents negative issues: supranational corporatism, pollution and homogenization. It could easily be said that many find economic globalism and free markets more difficult to stomach than travel and cultural exchange. Herein lies the contradiction. It is precisely economic globalism that makes cultural exchange and travel possible for many.

The brutal quest and acclaim for travel and internationalisation in our society raises many questions for me. Societies have engaged in cultural exchange for ages: why should systematic action be taken just now to accelerate it? Do we seek greater understanding or are we just satisfying our curiosity? Are we perhaps seeking a new culture? Has our own culture grown old, is it dying out, becoming homogenized? Is travel indicative of the restlessness of our hectic society, our inability to remain in one place, to come to a halt? Or is it just that easy travel makes us all travellers and travel has become just another hobby?

The world now contains a growing number of people for whom airports are all one and the same and hotel rooms interchangeable. These people are always away and at the same time, always at home. Place no longer matters. Or does it?

I am globalism is a collection of series of photographs dealing with the lifestyle of cultural exchange and mobility from a travelling artist´s point of view. The photographs on display include recent pictures from my stay at artist residences in Africa and Iceland as well as ones taken during travels in 2000-2006.

Sade Kahra