Working at the intersection of human rights and the arts, MA is dedicated to facilitating mobility and cultural exchange between countries that, for any reason, have restricted access to one another. In particular, MA seeks to enable movement and transnational exchange for art professionals whose work is threatened by situations of conflict, crisis, instability or censorship. Prolonged war conflicts and humanitarian crises often lead to closed borders and cultural isolation, thus conditioning cultural production within affected regions and distorting cultural perceptions externally. By opening on-going channels of movement and mutual interaction between artists under threat and outside artistic communities, MA seeks to create vibrant new spaces for artistic production—spaces of curiosity, collaboration and empowered meaning. The first step in Moving Artists development is the international residency exchange happening once a year in the Bilbao, Spain and a selected partner country. The first edition, started in February 2018, sees the participation of the Iraq Kurdistan. Two artists from Kurdistan will be resident in Spain and two from Spain will travel to Kurdistan. The first step to open ongoing channels, and many more steps will come.
