LONDON.- Today London Museum Docklands announces The Reflections Room, a new display space for artists. Complementing the museum’s galleries, the new space will offer room to explore a range of ideas and perspectives that foreground emotions and human experiences connected to London’s history.

It will launch on Friday 29 November featuring Exodus by British-Caribbean artist Zak Ové.

Exodus sees Zak explore migration through the present lens, highlighting the history and challenges of major population movements through time. The mixed media installation echoes a gridlocked cityscape, where colourful toy cars, trucks and human figurines mingle with elephants, giraffes and other wildlife towering over a scene of traffic. It rests on two green, white and red Castrol oil drums that nod to multinational business and finance in the modern world. The work suggests a reflection on today’s discourse around migration.

Exodus will be accompanied by a wall of historic maps that present a visual sense of data on international migration, agricultural trade, and tourism between 1500 and 2005. This will invite viewers to examine the relationships between such movements and the artwork on display.

Jean-Francois Manicom, Senior Curator at London Museum Docklands, said: “Art is a powerful tool to understand human experience in all its complexity and diversity. Alongside the records and objects in our galleries, we wanted a space where artists can express fears, doubts, hopes, and beliefs. An opportunity to bring in new voices to the museum, including those that are often less visible in London. If our collection is the body of the museum, this room is its soul, and we are delighted to launch with this work by Zak Ové. Migration is something which has long been at the heart of this city's story and continues to be an important topic today.”

Zak Ové said: “The history of mankind demonstrates a knowledge of humans walking freely around the Earth, often leaving in large numbers from one region to another. There is a theory that modern humans share a single racial stock having emerged out of Africa to replace all other populations.

With this in mind, I set out to make a piece that spoke about the movement of people from African countries, which is symbolic of all people who find themselves in Exodus. In the piece, all vehicles and dolls face the same way as there is only one way out, one way to leave, and only one hope of a future elsewhere.”

Exodus will be at London Museum Docklands from 29 November 2024 to May 2025. It is free to view as part of a general admission to the museum.