There was a long queue behind the border at New York's JFK Airport last Tuesday and passport holders from Muslim majority countries could not be blamed for feeling a bit anxious. The city was under snow and the plasma screens placed near control points announced major delays in transportation. A few minutes passed; it turned out there was little to be fearful about. Taking a quick look at my passport issued by the Turkish Republic (not among the seven countries in the U.S. travel ban) the officer welcomed this Turk to his city.

Behind the border, New Yorkers were attempting to adapt to the new president, Donald J. Trump and the executive orders he had put into action since taking office. Trump is one of their own; a New Yorker who had made his name and fortune here. Exhibitions in the art institutions of Trump's city also heralded a period of change. On a Wednesday afternoon, I made it to downtown Manhattan, where the International Center of Photography is located. Founded in 1974, this leading photography museum is hosting the exhibition "Perpetual Revolution", which is devoted to the image and social change. Hakan Topal's "Untitled (Ocean)" is one of the works specially commissioned for "The Flood: Refugees and Representation" section. Making use of internet art and political critique, this is an essential work for our times.

"A metaphor of inundation is frequently invoked in the language and images surrounding migration," Joanna Lehan writes in the exhibition text. "We speak of 'floods' and 'tides' of migrants, and view images of lines and crowds and masses of people. The event is imbued with fear, a sense of inevitability and loss of control."

In Topal's work, Google images depicting this "flood" are projected on a large table covered with limestone powder. This rugged surface is meant to represent both the Turkish-Syrian border and the shores of Bodrum, lately associated with the drownings of Syrian refugees. In the curators words: "Commissioned for this exhibition, Turkish artist Hakan Topal's installation starts with the image of Ajlan Kurdi, the Syrian child whose drowned body was photographed on the beach in Bodrum, Turkey, in 2015."

In Topal's work, Google images depicting this "flood" are projected on a large table covered with limestone powder. This rugged surface is meant to represent both the Turkish-Syrian border and the shores of Bodrum, lately associated with the drownings of Syrian refugees. In the curators words: "Commissioned for this exhibition, Turkish artist Hakan Topal's installation starts with the image of Ajlan Kurdi, the Syrian child whose drowned body was photographed on the beach in Bodrum, Turkey, in 2015."

A recurring image in Topal's 3-D animation is a Syrian child sleeping rough in Istanbul. "The shuffling of Topal's documentary images with those circulating on the Internet points to the disjunction between lived and virtual experience and despair. For Topal, the sea itself, acts as metaphor for vast and churning digital space in which these images circulate."

In Chelsea, New Yorkers had been appreciating works of another Turkish artist who takes a similarly elaborate look at the lives of refugees and their representation in western media. For his show "Space Refugee", on display at Andrew Kreps Gallery on 535 West 22nd Street, Halil Altındere explores the life of Muhammed Ahmed Faris, the first Syrian cosmonaut to visit space. Faris, who now lives as a refugee in Istanbul, has a modest proposal for the western world, where Syrians have often been portrayed as uneducated, poverty-stricken individuals with little intellectual skills. He wants to bring all the Syrian refugees to Mars (a planet thought to be suitable for human habitation), reminding us how civilization was born in Syria.

For his show "Space Refugee," on display at Andrew Kreps Gallery on 535 West 22nd Street, Halil Altındere explores the life of Muhammed Ahmed Faris, the first Syrian cosmonaut to visit space. Faris, who now lives as a refugee in Istanbul, has a modest proposal for the western world, where Syrians have often been portrayed as uneducated, poverty-stricken individuals with little intellectual skills.

Altındere's show was warmly received and audiences got a chance to learn more about Turkey's hospitality towards its neighbors. "The artist's achievement is his ability to demonstrate the terrible cruelty and bloodshed on Earth, by illustrating the ironic contradiction between the reality of the Syrian war and the illusory plan invented by refugees to flee their homes for Mars, the planet the god of war has granted his name to," New York based curator Osman Can Yerabakan wrote for Brooklyn's Hyperallergic art magazine. "Altındere is one of Turkey's most influential artists, an ironist in a part of the world where irony can be dangerous (especially to the ironist). Space Refugee, like much of his work, is both absurdist and humane," Carl Swanson opined in New York Magazine.

Although there were no Turkish artists on display at the city's New Museum, Jonathas de Andrade's "The Fish" uncannily reflects the same theme: his work is as thoughtful and unsettling as Altındere's and Topal's.

In this work the young Brazilian artist has filmed fishermen living in a coastal village in northeastern Brazil. We watch them catch fish before holding them to their chests. These attractive fishermen embrace their pray tenderly and we watch with them as each fish expires. There are no dialogues in De Andrade's film and no dramatic music accompanies the last moments of these dying animals. When I visited one afternoon not along ago, an elderly couple was in tears, overcome by the intensity of the images. The death of something familiar followed by the arrival of something new: this is what many New Yorkers like them had been reflecting on in the past month.