RECOVERED HISTORIES INTRODUCTION AND ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Foreword by Rita Hindocha, Senior Educational Leader, Leicester UK. 

Rita Hindocha arrived as a refugee from Uganda in 1972.

The urgency and relevance of the Recovered Histories Project cannot be overstated at this particular juncture in our history. As we are daily assaulted by appeals to an ever-narrowing sense of what constitutes “us”, Sfougaras’s work asserts for us the binding humanity of our shared histories. 

In capturing and melding in ever-dazzling combinations the journeys of people across time and continents, the exhibition reaches out to offer an inclusive worldview, one we can all access if we care to listen and observe with as deep compassion as Sfougaras has done over the years. He had mined this seam of memory over the decades with ever more compelling force and precision reaching satisfying maturity in this latest work. 

The unique quality of this project resides in showing how the migrant and refugee experience can resonate with the agency even while born in subjugation and flight; it can reveal a haunting beauty if the palimpsest of fragments and memories is allowed to be built up and then uncovered. 

However, this can only be achieved if the artist has the humility to seek out these rich stores of memory held in the margins and buried crevices of society. This is the unique gift that Sfougaras has. His attentive ear and compassion elicit hidden stories and testimonies which would otherwise remain neglected if not downright suppressed. This makes for often striking and illuminating juxtapositions of the catastrophic and the beautiful, enabling us to see the visually arresting even in the midst of horror and fear. 

Ever respectful of his subjects and collaborators, Sfougaras is adept at finding meaning and beauty in unexpected places. He is not afraid of delving into deeper dimensions of spirituality to access rich layers of meaning and experience. This means that the project has uncovered histories from far and wide but which now, fortunately, reside in our midst locally if only we had the compassion and curiosity to look. 

For the Recovered Histories Project, Sfougaras has gathered around him other like-minded talents who work in other forms and media, including poetry and film. This adds a further richness of insight to the shared experience of journeys made. 

The current brutal and unashamed rhetoric of closing in, of walling ‘ourselves’ off from ‘others,’ requiring these ‘others’ to go ‘back to their countries’ means that this complex affirmation of the migrant experience has never been more necessary. The ‘us’ here is wide, embracing and unifying. Beauty endures in our common human bonds across space, time, language and beliefs. Therefore, there is hope as this vision is so much more compelling than that of the current crop of our chest-thumping political masters. What is uncovered here is light and love, deep and wide enough to embrace all our stories. 

Rita Hindocha, July 2019

Introduction by the artist

             

I have been working on the theme of layers for a while, the stories unfolding over archetypal faces and in the form of annotated maps.

It is in this context that I started to make the works which contained several pictorial planes, covering, hiding, uncovering and re-covering parts of the many layers.  I played around withthe idea that most often we see only the surface, when beneath there is a wealth of knowledge and information. The works have been informed by my own experiences, from the resettlement of my parents on the basis of religion, to my own, as an adolescent migrant. I also had the privilege of working with others whose lives have been shaped by the pain of displacement.

The physical journeys and their emotional impact are at the core of this body of work. The desirable trajectory of the recovery process is described as follows: Succumbing, Surviving, Recovering and Thriving. In the real world, however, recovery is a cyclical process. The above words were the original title of the project. I used them to help me compose the images and patterns.  In essence, they are the dark and the light in the works.

The banner works are on material that alludes to the hessian sacks that contained the crop of raisins my grandparents harvested every year. This was a kind of agriculture brought to Crete from Asia Minor with the refugees. The hands that appear in places sometimes almost hidden have the dual meaning of giving and of taking, of offering help and of committing violence. The patterns used allude to cultural inheritance. I have used the motif of the Tree of Life, which exists as a powerful symbol in many cultures.  Some hand-printed layers become apparent only when we examine the surface, particularly some of the digital prints, which at first appear to be totally mechanical.  In the back-lit works, the good and the bad memories flicker through the top layer. Light and curiosity reveal new details the way that research does.

Faces from the several families are layered, manipulated or juxtaposed alongside these and other elements. The surfaces reveal and conceal intermittently, or have information that is obscured or has been removed after being applied, leaving but a trace.  The films, particularly the film by Kate Drucquer, add another narrative strand and animate these histories.

Finally, there are some parts that will only appear when the audience leaves.  What could not easily be seen in the light will appear for a while in the darkened gallery space.  Memories, like the phosphoric ink used in these layers, will appear fleetingly, like ghosts in the night. 

This is a body of work which has taken me into new techniques and methods but importantly has brought me into contact with many wonderful people.  Their contributions have been invaluable in making this work. There is further information about these partnerships and the works in the catalogue. I am indebted to Rita Hindocha for illuminating my motives in her generous foreword.

To recover the past is not an act of nostalgia or morbid curiosity. It is an important function of a time limited life: to learn from those that preceded us and to hand down important information. We cannot forget the mistakes of the past, nor the people and the experiences that have shaped us. In recovering those individual and collective narrative we are able to feel, acknowledge, learn and forgive. 

George Sfougaras, July 2019

Exhibition Collaborators

Michele Benn taught English as an additional language for over 30 years and now works part-time in a supplementary school for unaccompanied young asylum seekers. She is the daughter of a Judeo-Spanish refugee and enjoys exploring the culture and places of that ancestry, which provides inspiration for many of her poems. She lives in Leicester, where she coordinates social action activities for Neve Shalom, the Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation.

Paul Conneally is a poet, artist and musician based in Loughborough, UK. Conneally leads live renga sessions across the UK and has explored the form and process alongside other UK artist poets including Alec Finlay, Gavin Wade, Gerry Loose and Anne-Marie Culhane. He is associated with the modern Situationist movement through psychogeography, social intervention and literary detournement, both alone and in collaboration with others. 

Kate Drucquer is a film-maker that specialises in socially relevant content. She is uniquely placed to handle this kind of material with sensitivity and insight.  I am indebted to her for preserving the essence of the archives given to her and for creating a subtle, poignant film that weaves a gentle, yet powerful narrative journey through many lives and experiences. 

Malka Al-Haddad has previously taught Arabic literary criticism at Kufa University in Iraq. A defender of human rights, member of the Iraqi and American reconciliation project, and the Leicester Civil Rights Movement, Malka has performed her poems in Parliament and at The Southbank Centre, London. She was poet in resident in Swindon and Lincoln.   Her book “Birds without Sky" was shortlisted for the Leicester Book of the Year award 2018.  

Linda Harding is the Community Engagement Officer for Leicester City Museums. I worked with Linda in creating the community response to the Richard III portrait at New Walk Museum.   Linda, a successful textile artist, and I asked her if she would embellish one of the images in the exhibition, entitled ‘Geo-Metrics’. This is in homage to my aunt Dimitra Georgiadi a seamstress, who played a significant role in my early life and whose presence is often felt in my work.

The ROOTs Volunteers, Bharti, Cloud Chunga,  Manoj and Nisha Patel, Minaz Samnai, and Maya shared a little of their lives with me whilst making art together, specifically three large prints for Recovered Histories and six banners as part of the Richard III Coming Home exhibition. They informed me in ways that will continue to influence my work.  Also thanks to my long-term friend and Leicester resident Arvind Bhatt, an engineer, mathematician and linguist who kindly shared his family photographs and memoirs with me. 

Paul Rudman is a scientist, an expert in virtual reality and a lighting designer.  His programmable lights animate the stories in three of my works and create another layer of meaning, but also, in my opinion, a background of compelling beauty. Light is another medium for the artist and Paul’s work is now available to others who wish to pursue this path. You can read more about Paul’s work in the exhibition. I asked Paul to animate ‘Ruins’, ‘Geo-Metrics’ and ‘Re-examined’.

My grateful thanks to Nicola Middler, Senior Producer with ArtReach, and to Yasmin Calvin, director of the Print Workshop in Leicester, for their encouragement during the writing of the bid to the Arts Council and as the project unfolded. Finally to all of the staff and volunteers at the LPW and LCB who have supported me in hanging the show. 

And finally to my partner Gabi Witthaus, whose academic work on refugee education and her determination to make this world more just and kind are constant sources of inspiration. I can think of no other companion that could add so much to this temporal journey. 

George Sfougaras August 2019