When visiting an art museum or gallery, we are presented with the potential of encountering the unexpected, broadening our perspectives, and challenging habitual patterns of thought. The museum thus becomes a kind of “safe space” – a place where imagination can roam freely, and new ideas can emerge. We can also create personal “safe zones” through everyday actions: putting on headphones, immersing ourselves in our phones, or pulling down a cap. These actions give us a protected distance from the world, a private refuge for reflection and mental comfort.

The artworks in Beyond the Safe Zone are rooted in various types of conflict and insecurity but look beyond the limited concept of the “safe zone.” The need for protection and safety is universal and is reflected in how the concept of the “safe zone” is applied in vastly different contexts, from military and humanitarian operations to advocacy and education. Safety is about more than physical protection; it can also entail spaces for community, healing, and resistance – zones where marginalised groups can exist without threat or violence.

The home, which should be a place of safety, can unfortunately become an environment where individual needs and identities clash with societal expectations and norms. When the structures meant to protect turn out to be controlling, dysfunctional, or toxic, people develop strategies of resistance: flight, mental coping mechanisms, or spaces actively created for liberty.

On a societal level, the notion of safety is also charged with complexity. In security policy, “safe zones” are often intended to protect civilians from war, violence, or persecution. Curiously, however, these zones, established by international bodies such as the UN or military forces, are not protected by international humanitarian law, revealing that they are, in fact, precarious.

But what happens when the “safe zone” turns into its opposite? Philosopher Achille Mbembe describes how “safe zones” can instead become “death zones.” The concept of necropolitics refers to how political decisions continually determine who gets to live and who is left to die, where the right to life is governed by control over resources. When states of emergency are declared, laws are suspended, and people are stripped of their normal rights, leaving them vulnerable to arbitrary control. These radically dehumanised places – such as war zones and refugee camps – are not only areas where the state fails to protect its citizens but also where it often actively contributes to their vulnerability.

The establishment of “safe zones” thus raises both moral and ethical questions. Who is allowed entry, and who is excluded? What rights are granted within these zones, and who is stripped of their fundamental rights? For some, a “safe zone” represents security, while for others, it becomes a tool for exclusion and control.

This directly opposes what safe spaces are intended to be and can paradoxically undermine international protection laws, such as the right to asylum and the principle of non-refoulement – the prohibition against returning individuals to countries where they risk persecution, torture, or other serious violations of their human rights. Meanwhile, the fear of change can be used as a subtle tool of power to preserve existing structures and control what is perceived as threatening or unfamiliar. What appears as safety to some can be a mechanism of exclusion and control for others.

Yet, in the same spaces where fear is used to limit freedom, resistance and possibility also emerge. For some, resistance means creating their own spaces where their existence and identity can flourish. Others argue that these self-made spaces, which are essential for marginalised groups to feel safe, can become even more powerful when they open doors to “trading zones.”

These are places where ideas, experiences, and expressions meet and exchange – where mutual exchange, rather than isolation, engenders new ways of thinking, living, and coexisting. Art, engagement, and community offer ways to challenge established structures and renegotiate what safety and belonging can truly mean. The opening (and closing) artwork in the exhibition asks what a “we” that “is here” really signifies. By highlighting how displacement and existence impact the concept of “we,” the question is raised: what truly unites us? In a world where borders entail both safety and exclusion, shouldn’t “we” stand for something that includes us all? When the illusion of safe zones is shattered, how can we enhance the sense of safety and community, both as individuals and as a society?

In connection with the exhibition, the film Miguel’s War by Eliane Raheb will be screened at Röda Kvarn on two occasions : on the opening day, May 17, and as part of the GIBCA Extended program on September 27.

Curator:
Power Ekroth Länk till annan webbplats. (SWE/NO) is an independent curator, critic and educator, and editor-in-chief of SITE Zones. As one of the curators at Stockholm Konst, she commissions and acquires art for the city’s public spaces. Her extensive curatorial work includes contributions to large-scale projects such as Something Else in Cairo (Persistence Through Joy, 2023, co-curated with Sara Rossling), Borås International Biennial (A Grin Without a Cat, 2018), Momentum Biennale (Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, 2013) and most recently the Greenlight Triennial in Skien and Porsgrunn, Norway (The Curse of an Unstoppable Appetite, 2024). Between 2022 and 2024, Ekroth was the coordinator between SWAN Emergency Residencies and Artists at Risk, which provided shelter to artists fleeing oppression and war.