Jack Arts
Marking World Refugee Day with No Man’s Land by Ngadi Smart
Refugee week is the world’s largest arts & culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees, the activity surrounds World Refugee Day on the 20th June. GRAIN Projects commissioned award-winning Sierra Leonean artist Ngadi Smart to mark this week by leading a series of workshops with women and their families, at one of Birmingham’s government assigned hotels. Within the workshops the group created new artwork in response to her experience; titled ‘No Mans Land’ the vibrant and detailed work combined photography, collage and illustration. We present the powerful final artwork in large scale format on our billboard at Sherlock Street, Birmingham.
The workshop brought participants from China, Sudan, India and Turkey together, bringing rich cultural references to the creative sessions:
‘Their stories had an impact on me. The dreams, families, lives they had to give up, the seemingly endless wait for the results of their applications, which almost seemed like a purgatory to me, as their new lives are unable to start until applications are approved…
The workshops reinforced my belief that everyone is essentially an artist/creative. I will always remember how some people came along and immediately showed off their creative skills, and others, who swore they weren’t creative, but realised they actually were after they started selecting images, cutting, sticking, drawing and collaging. The children were confident in taking part, with no inhibitions.
For this work, it was important for me to incorporate some of the elements of participant’s family pictures, which they sent to me via mobile phone. These are included without revealing identities and include children’s hands making a heart shape, and daffodils photographed in a city park, symbolising birth and new beginnings. I have included the sea and the land as elements for human sustenance, also as references to treacherous and long journeys, and sand timers as symbols of their time which they have given up in leaving a place, and given again in waiting – all in one lifetime.” - Ngadi Smart