Week 15

James Kenvin checks in weekly from his study abroad semester in London; catch up with him every Wednesday on Trazee Travel.

It’s that time of year again — finals week. The very name strikes panic in every college student’s soul. Finals week abroad is 10 times worse than back home. Not because it requires more work, but because it also means the end of my time in London. Seeing the end approaching, I realized I still have so much I want to do before I’m forced onto the plane back home. One thing I wanted to do but kept putting off was visiting all the amazing museums and galleries in this city; therefore I set out this week to see the Saatchi Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Saatchi Gallery is open for free and holds some of the most interesting modern exhibitions I’ve ever seen. They have galleries that feature themes like religion and ideologies, advertising and consumerism and mass media. The piece I found the most intriguing from this gallery is the entire room filled with national flags or religious symbols all made out of human hair — it was kind of disgustingly alluring.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (or the V&A) is also home to many thought-provoking exhibitions. Most of these exhibits are free, but a select few cost a small fee. My favorite exhibit was called Disobedient Objects, which consisted of signs, costumes and other things used in political and social protests around the world. An interesting part of this exhibit was a wall open for anyone to write a message on. These messages referenced inequality and other social injustices in different countries around the world. I felt the diversity of this wall represented a unity among those mistreated in various cultures around the world, and a unanimous desire to make it end.

Both this wall and the hair exhibit in the Saatchi Gallery show that we may all come from different places and believe in different things, but we are still all human. This theme was something I noticed while being abroad. Every country I visited, I was expecting everyone to be so different from myself. And although I saw new beliefs and customs, I never felt out of place. This revelation is why I see that travel is so important — to see and understand the unity of everyone around the world.