Migration as a Natural Instinct
This Thursday, January 22, we invite you to FLYWAYS, an exhibition that examines Movement, Survival, and Belonging through the shared paths of humans and migratory birds.
Migration is natural. It is the movement toward better living conditions, greater opportunities, and survival. Across the planet, migration has always been a response to environmental pressures such as seasonal change, hostile climates, and resource scarcity. It is a fundamental mechanism of life.
Migratory birds exemplify this instinct. Each year, they undertake extraordinary journeys between northern breeding grounds and warmer wintering regions. Driven by food availability, longer daylight hours for raising their young, and temperature changes, they navigate vast distances using landmarks, the sun, stars, and Earth’s magnetic field. Along these routes, they face immense risks: habitat loss, climate change, collisions, predators, and human threats such as illegal hunting. Many do not survive their first migration.
Yet while migration remains widely accepted as natural in the animal world, human migration has increasingly been framed as abnormal, dangerous, or even criminal. Despite being driven by similar forces - access to resources, opportunity, and the need to escape life-threatening conditions - human migration has become complex, restrictive, and often deadly. International refugee law, media narratives, and deeply rooted racialized perceptions of newcomers have transformed migration into a subject associated with threat, competition, and pity, stripping it of its normality.
This exhibition seeks to reframe migration through a deliberately neutral lens, highlighting the shared motivations and patterns between human and animal movement. By presenting migration as a fundamental instinct rather than a political problem, the project distances itself from reductive narratives of victimhood or danger, inviting audiences to reconsider migration beyond polarized interpretations.
The installation unfolds across three interconnected rooms, forming a single immersive experience. The central space is a sound-based environment featuring a ceiling projection of birds in motion and two interconnected maps tracing migratory pathways - one human, one avian. The soundscape reflects dominant migration narratives shaped by media and political discourse, gradually overpowering the natural sound of birdsong, which fades into the background. This tension mirrors how lived migrant voices are often overshadowed.
The adjoining rooms present seven portraits of migratory birds alongside seven portraits of immigrants, each pair linked as equivalents. Every portrait is accompanied by a story - human or animal - detailing the motivations, conditions, and challenges that shaped their journey. Together, these narratives emphasize migration as a shared condition of life, movement, and resilience.
Exhibition Title: “FLYWAYS”
Location: Plex, 1st floor, Keramikou 28, Athens
Date: Thursday 22.01.26 after 16:00
Organization: Dimitra Faka, Theano Giannezi, Lea Bahne, Panos Tsamouras
With the support of Echo Academy & the European Union
Admission in Free
