Sanctuary 30 The Museum Banner Commission. Making date November 2019. Exhibition date: December 2019-January 2020, New Walk Museum, Leicester.

The Open 30 Banner and installation.

A work in development by George Sfougaras, in partnership with Linda Harding and Refugee, Asylum seeker and community volunteers.

Images created by Community Volunteers.

I have been working on three images showing people seeking safety. As most refugee and asylum seekers often travel by sea in treacherous conditions, I have used three such representations and I provide an explanation with each one, and how it may be combined with the Birds of Freedom that Linda Harding has been making with various community groups and volunteers.

Proposal 1

The version of the above image is derived from the painting entitled ‘Unwritten’. As the men and women travel through the arduous journey, their fate is yet undetermined. It is not yet written, although the belief in many cultural contexts is that our fate and future is predetermined. This idea is embodied in the word ‘Kismet’.

The word kismet comes from the Arabic word ḳismat, meaning “division, portion, lot.” You can think of kismet as your lot in life, or your fate. You’ll often hear the word used in relation to something significant that came about entirely by chance.  The word comes from Kismat, which in Islam means the will of Allah destiny, fate, an event (or a course of events) that will inevitably happen in the future https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/kismet

In the piece I allude to two of the works by Kathe Kollwitz, whose work so powerfully speaks of human frailty and the impact of society on the most vulnerable. You can see the images I refer to below.

Kathe Kollwitz woman with dead child

Kathe Kollwitz woman thinking

I superimposed two resonant images over the above painting.   The first is entitled ‘Compass’ and was taken from my recent work with the Volunteer Consultation Group that was initiated by ArtReach in Leicester. The following extract is from the Recovered Histories Exhibition catalogue.  The second image is a turbulent sea, taken from a photograph.

Above: ‘Compass’ from the Recovered Histories project and Exhibition August 2019.

Original ink drawing Colour screenprint made at Leicester Print Workshop with Bharti, Minaz Samnai, Maya and Manoj Patel.

“We come from many places, guided by a compass pointing in several directions. Up north, then west, north again and then north West. No straight lines, no priority lanes no signposts. Just the camps, the mud, sometimes a smiling face, but rarely that, mostly blank stares, questions and the stale air of offices.

Finally here. Each trail a wavering line through the unknown and mostly alone. So many stories, but I cannot begin to ask, for fear of knowing. We gather around a task and we make something beautiful.  Our image shows the dark and the light of the journey, sadness and relief.

We look at each other and we know that we are all still traveling, me among them.  The paper and the inks soak each other up, like us, each one looking for the other”.

 GS 2019

The combination of the images was achieved by converting the image into a colour separation using Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black. The results are shown below. This was then photographed and digitally enhanced.  You can see part of the process below:

 Tri-chromatic separation of the painting.

Experimenting with colour combinations in the print room

The Birds of Freedom

I took photographs of the beautiful birds made by the volunteers under Linda’s guidance.  Some of the ones are shown below.

I decided to combine my image of the boat drifting, full of brave souls trying to find safety with the images of the birds flying with the people on their backs.  These heartfelt pieces are symbolic of the many people lost at sea and returning ‘Home’.  Home being in this case back to the eternal, the Universe and each one’s vision of the hereafter.

Here is the outcome of combining the long image entitled ‘Unwritten’ with some of the birds.

In the version shown above, I have added  the images of the birds,removing the background and changing their texture, as well as making them more transparent to blend in with the overall image.

In the second combination/suggestion for a panel below, I have made one of the birds the main focus and part of the ‘Unwritten’ painting/print the background.  This can be seen below.

Proposal 2.

I repeated the latter process with two more images that show people undertaking life-changing journeys by boat. In the first one, which is entitled ‘Together’ people are grouped uncomfortably on the deck of a small craft. The work is shown below both as a drawing and later translated into a trichromatic screenprint.

I thought about the way that families and friends are often ‘broken apart’ so the title ‘Together’ is a reverse of what actually happens during the long journeys of migrants. I cut up the image and treated each section differently in terms of colour to achieve the effect of separation or at least allude to the changes that are inevitable along the way. The outcomes and some steps of the process are shown below.

The ‘final’ screenprint. Combing the ‘Together’ print with one of the Birds of Freedom, see below:

Proposal  3:

‘Haven’.

This is a different approach which I tried sometime ago. Creating a haven within an impossible space/situation. There is an irony in the romantic  and sanitised vintage- like image of the two lovers. Here, there is no attempt to look beyond each other.  Clearly, this idealised and improbable image is not the reality of people’s experiences whilst struggling on high seas to reach safety. However, I wanted to bring us back to a sense of our humanity, our everyday need for companionship and love. This is what drives most of us and this force of love and connection is what ultimately defines us as human beings. In the midst of a perilous journey when physical survival becomes the focal point of one’s existence, I wanted to bring back this sense of being human. Love, that’s all that matters ultimately.

The drawing was again superimposed with the image of the sea and several other images from the work on this project. I also created two further proposals which I decided to use in a more expansive way for an international cooperation project. These will be included in a future blog post.

Having met up with Linda Harding and discussed the work so far, I reworked two of the works that we felt were the most effective, arriving at two final contenders for displaying in the New Walk Museum.  Below you can see the reworked drawing and the digitally enhanced version.