From a distance. Behjat Omer Abdulla. All rights reserved.Public participation poses challenges, in particular when addressing issues as harsh and emotive as the experiences of refugees. How can art contribute to acts of imagination which then lead to the building of new solidarities? How can the stories we tell about tragic experiences connect people and create acts of witnessing and responsibility rather than voyeurism or indifference? Behjat Omer Abdalla’s work interrogates these issues. Developing an interactive element to engage audiences in his large-scale drawings, which depict the tragic experiences of a refugee family, he asks audiences to place themselves in relation to refugees’ stories. By inviting them to write a response, he invites audiences, many of whom have not been refugees themselves, to examine their role as social and political actors who can take up responsibility. In the responses to his work, an interesting narrative emerges, whereby many reflect on their own family histories, which involved refugees. Others raise questions relating to a shared humanity and shared feelings and experiences of family, while others reflect on the difficulty of relating across hierarchies imposed by national borders and privileges of citizenship.
How can art contribute to acts of imagination which then lead to the building of new solidarities?
In his work, From a Distance, Behjat Omer Abdulla asks: what would it mean to experience our own privileged lives as inextricably tied up with the exposed lives of less fortunate others elsewhere in the world? Under the fear of war, as thousands of families fled their homelands, a mother of twin infants started her journey to seek a safer place. During the journey, a tragedy occurred. Behjat explores these events through a series of drawings in order to reflect on their meaning and make connections to a wider audience.
