A Domestic Worker' Story - photo essay on love, loss, and displacement

 

Caroline’s daughter, Elodie with Juning’s second son, Roel, on the family farm in Bantayan Island/Credit: Caroline Irby

 

Award-winning photographer Caroline Irby grew up in London with Juning, a Filipina woman, who stayed with her family for 22 years, first in Hong Kong, then in London.  “I can’t say where Juning’s influence on my early years began and ended: she was in almost every part of my life.”  Caroline says that today no smell is more comforting than the smell of rice, which Juning loved to cook. And it is now her children’s staple.

But Juning had four children of her own living on her native Bantayan, a small island in the Philippines 7,000 miles away.  

It was only when Caroline became a mother herself that she grasped the price Juning and her children had to pay. “I can’t shake off a feeling of strangeness that their lives and mine carried on in parallel for all those years, mine with their mother, theirs without. We are all part of the same curious equation, and after decades of living in tandem but remotely, I wanted to try to understand how this all happened and what the effect on the people involved had been.”

 

Juning’s four children left behind

The result is “Someone Else’s Mother”, a beautiful and sensitive photo essay, interweaving Caroline's own recollections of a childhood spent with Juning with conversations and photos with Juning and her four children – gleaned in London and over three visits to Bantayan.

I found the book particularly interesting and moving because, although it tells the very personal story of Caroline and Juning and their families, it also echoes parts of the stories of millions of nannies and their host families across the world.

Every day, just from the Philippines, 5,000 people leave their country in search of work abroad. For decades, this movement has been female dominated: more than 70% of Filipino emigrants are currently women.

 

When she became a mother, Caroline decided to look after her children herself as much as possible, aware that is a freedom of choice Juning couldn’t have.

Juning explained: “I was desperate to earn more money. My children were still young and I left them with my mother. It hurt me when I left them, but I had no choice: I had to work abroad for their education.”

And Roly, Juning’s oldest child, told Caroline when she visited Bantayan in 2018 with her own children:  “I was lonely. Everywhere I was looking for her care. You were lucky, Caroline: you had her care for so many years. I had no one to talk to when I had a problem.”

Juning achieved her goal of feeding and educating her family: three of them have university degrees. Between them, there is a farm, several other homes, nine children, two foster children, and the extended family is well supported. “Quietly, Juning has been a vessel for a huge amount of change.”

Yet, “Someone Else’s Mother” is a bittersweet story with no happy ending. The thoughtful texts and light-infused photography weave together a story of  attachment, loneliness and displacement, love and loss, memory, sadness and hope, guilt and inequality. It is also a story to try to understand.  

And nannies and domestic workers all over the world will recognize parts of that story.

The book, published by Schilt in 2020, can be ordered online and from bookstores (and here).

Juning’s grown up children with Caroline’s children on Batayan Island/Credit: Caroline Irby

World's first graphic novel made by homeless people

           

Authors working on The Book of Homelessness/Courtesy of Accumulate

I love graphic novels and I love stories told by the people who are experiencing them, so this is my kind of book.

The Book of Homelessness, recently published in the UK, shares the life stories of people affected by homelessness through their own drawings, texts, poetry and photography. Their stories are personal, emotional, raw and honest. They talk about pain, abuse and dysfunction, about families, war, rejection and misplaced love, and  about overcoming difficulties and fighting and succeeding. 

By telling their own stories in the form they wanted to tell them, the authors hope to show the complexities of homelessness and what causes it – and perhaps help change perceptions around homelessness.

 The project is the brainchild of Marice Cumber, founder of youth homelessness charity Accumulate, which describes itself as “the art school of the homeless”.

The charity encourages young homeless people’s creativity through courses on fashion, photography, sculpture, graphic design and more. They also hold exhibitions and source funding to send really talented individuals to arts college. (So far, they’ve sent 20 to arts college).

Accumulate launched a crowdfunding initiative for the book two years ago, and creative workshops with the participants – who were all living in hostels, shelters or temporary accommodation – started last January.

Samantha Morton, herself previously homeless, has written an intro to the book entitled “How homelessness shaped my life”, and Colin Firth has said about it: "This is a remarkable collection in any context. The fact that these beautiful, personal works are the expressions of our neighbours who are homeless makes it untenable to ignore them ever again."

All profits from The Book of Homelessness are shared with its authors and Accumulate so it can continue to provide creative workshops for people who are homeless.

Please visit Accumulate to purchase a copy of the book (£25)

Extinction Rebellion Art and Design at the V&A

Extinction Rebellion posters. Photo credit: Chris J Ratcliffe Getty Images

Protest movements have always used art to carry and amplify their messages. The Climate and Ecological emergency is THE issue of our time, and the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement is skillfully using art and design to galvanise public concern for the planet with maximum impact. Their flags, banners and flyers in punchy colours with carefully worded slogans and woodblock prints are now immediately recognisable across the globe.

Extinction Rebellion, as many might already know, is a global activist group calling for urgent action on climate change through acts of non-violent civil disobedience and disruption. Since its first public action on 31 October 2018, urging the UK government to declare a climate and ecological emergency and commit to reduce emissions to net zero by 2025, XR has grown into an international movement with over 363 groups active in 59 countries around the world.

XR’s graphics balance joy and menace with a bold, tongue-in-cheek approach, and are characterised by four core design elements. These include the use of the Extinction Symbol, the XR logotype, a colour-palette of 12 playful tones including ‘Lemon’ yellow and ‘Angry’ pink influenced by pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, and the fonts ‘FUCXED’ and ‘Crimson’. Often juxtaposing imagery of the natural world with more sinister images of skulls and bones, XR’s urgent visuals articulate hope, while outlining the grave consequences the group feels failure to act will bring. 

Recognizing the importance of the movement and the value of its unique designs, the London V&A has acquired a series of objects exploring the design identity of Extinction Rebellion.

The pieces produced by the Extinction Rebellion Arts Group, a coalition of graphic designers, artists and activists responsible for XR’s Design Programme, range from the open-source Extinction Symbol created by street artist ESP in 2011 and adopted by XR in 2018, to the Declaration that accompanied their first act of Rebellion, and flags carried during mass demonstrations. They are on display in the V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting Gallery (gallery 74a).

The objects have been acquired through the V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting, an innovative programme that enables the acquisition and immediate display of design objects that address questions of social, political, technological and economic change.

“Design has been key to Extinction Rebellion’s demands for urgent action on climate change. The strong graphic impact of the Extinction Symbol alongside a clear set of design principles have ensured that their acts of rebellion are immediately recognisable,” says Corinna Gardner, Senior Curator of Design and Digital at the V&A.

“Extinction Rebellion have galvanised public concern for the planet, and their design approach stands in relation to earlier protest movements such as the Suffragettes who encouraged the wearing of purple, green and white to visually communicate their cause.”

Stories From Within – Syrian artists tell stories of survival, resilience

Human Bull I by Bassem Dahdouh/courtesy of Stories Art Gallery

When four internationally renowned Syrian artists were asked to contribute pieces showing what they wanted the West to see about their country, they selected artworks representing the untold stories of ordinary people who have endured and persevered through extraordinary circumstances.

Their work form  “Stories from Within”, a fascinating exhibition on display at Stories Art Gallery in London’s Mayfair until February 25. The gallery opened last October with the aim of promoting current Syrian artists whose work challenges their country’s one-dimensional image presented in the media. All the “Stories From Within” pieces were created in Syria over the past seven (almost eight) years and it is the first time since the war that they are exhibited in Europe.

 “We look for works that widen our vision and shift the image of Syria from refugees and needy victims to be pitied to one of humanity and respect – one with whom the viewers can have a connection,” says Manas Ghanem, the gallery’s director.  

 “Yes, there is war, destruction and darkness, but you cannot reduce Syria’s 7000 years of existence to seven years of war.  Syria is still alive,” adds Ghanem, who was born in Damascus, but educated in the West. Before opening her gallery, she worked as a lawyer in the Middle East and North Africa with UNHCR and Unicef.   

Bassem Dahdouh’s mixed media on canvas “humanoid bull” series depicts hybrid beings who are neither fully human nor beast.  The humanoid bull “portrays us, oppressed when reaching out for a breath of fresh air in an attempt to lead normal lives," he explains.  "It is my hope that we as humanity would succeed and plant some kindness and compassion in this land before it is too late."

Nizar Sabour’s work reflects the emotional impact of the war on the sacred Aramaic town of Maloula, where people still speak the dialect of the Christ and which was ravaged by jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda in 2013.  Never before had this ancient mountain town been harmed.  His five mixed media canvases represent various views of Maloula and the surrounding Qalamoun mountains, some surrounded by protecting lace, guardian angels and saints or official-looking stamps.

The works of the other artists in the exhibition - Edward Shahda and Asmaa Fayoumi - depict the anxiety of those left behind while waiting for the unknown, and finally also hope, love and compassion, which is what allows people to survive.

People don’t easily associate art and Syria, says Ghanem, but the Syrian art scene has been vivid since the 50s and the 60s, and many of the artists exhibited in the gallery are renowned in the world of contemporary art, including Sabour, Shahda, Dahdouh and Fayoumi, who have works in private collections and galleries from USA to Russia, as well as in Arabic countries like UAE, Kuwait and Lebanon.

“Yet for the past eight years, it’s as if that has just gone, and all that you hear about Syria is different. So we are trying to bring it back,” Ghanem says.

The gallery’s next projects include an Arabic calligraphy exhibition by the famous Syrian artist Mounier Al-Sharaani. They also hope to be able to bring artworks from Iraq, Yemen and other countries. 

Stories From Within at the Stories Art Gallery  until February 25. 
51/53    South    Audley    Street Mayfair London W1J 7DD

Yegna – a cautionary tale in humanitarian aid

Yegna in concert in Bahir Dar/Courtesy of Girl Effect

 

Should humanitarian aid be about food parcels and vaccination campaigns? Or could it be something more intangible and holistic?

Yegna,  a project trying to reframe the place of girls in Ethiopian society - a country where discrimination and violence against girls and women are common - crystallized that debate in the UK.

Over the past few years, the right-wing media waged a campaign against Yegna - which was co-funded by the UK Department for International Development (DIFD) - calling it “the most wasteful, ludicrous and patronizing” aid project in Africa and “blood boiling waste of taxpayers' money.” 

The articles caused widespread outcry from MPs and taxpayers. In January 2017, DIFD, which had previously given the program high marks and had planned to give it £11.8m between 2015 and 2018, cut all funding. 

Although the right-wing media dubbed it “Ethiopia’s Spice Girls”, Yegna is not just a girl group, but a brand that addresses issues such as early forced marriage, violence and barriers to education through a very popular radio drama, music and talkshows – all critical channels in a developing country with a strong musical and storytelling tradition. 

The radio drama, also called Yegna, features the five band members representing characters with different backgrounds, facing and overcoming many of the challenges experienced by Ethiopian girls. 

Take Mimi, for example. In the drama, she is a street kid who ran away from early marriage when she was 13 and had to sacrifice her education. She lives on the street and sells chewing gum and trinkets to passers-by. 

“Mimi is my favorite character because she is most like me. She’s very strong and does not give up,” says Alemtsehay Berihun, a 17-year-old Yegna fan who lives with her aunt in Wonka, a village in the Amhara region.

In Amhara, where Berihun lives, and in Addis, the two regions where Yegna is distributed, one in every two people listen to Yegna, according to Girl Effect. 

 “In our school, I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t know Yegna. You would walk into a random house in our town and find a Yegna poster inside,” Berihun says. 

The decision to cut funding disappointed Girl Effect, the charity behind Yegna, as well as other aid organizations, which are developing less traditional and more creative approaches to impact long-term changes.  “We were surprised and disappointed,” says Gaya Butler, the Ethiopia country director for Girl Effect. “Girl Effect addresses the demand for aid rather than the supply of it. For example, many organizations are building schools, but they are not filled because lots of cultural norms are preventing girls from attending school. We tackle those social norms.”

And they were having an impact. For example, 84 per cent of girls listening to Yegna, report that it has helped them become more confident, while 76 per cent report it has inspired them to continue their education, according to a 2014 audience survey, conducted by an independent local research agency.

Boys have also been inspired: 95 percent of boys who regularly listen to Yegna agreed that they would speak to someone if they saw a young girl being forced to get married. 

And Yegna has helped change parents’ attitudes, says Asnakech Kebede, 48, a mother of four girls and a primary school teacher. “It used to be culturally unacceptable for girls to stand up straight and speak up, but now parents see their value.” 

For aid workers and activists, the fate of Yegna is a lesson not only in tactics, but also in the limitations of foreign funding — and how much anti-aid sentiment exists in many countries.

Here is the story I wrote for Broadly on Yegna, explaining what Yegna is trying to achieve and how, and why I think it's a project well worth supporting, in spite of the smear campaign by the right-wing media.  Let me know what you think. 

The kindness of strangers: exhibition celebrating solidarity towards refugees

Museum With A Home at the School Life and Education Museum in Athens

I’ve been working with Oxfam on a story celebrating the kindness and solidarity of ordinary people towards the men, women and children who are seeking peace and sanctuary in Europe.

It’s a story of the Museum Without A Home, a touring exhibition showcasing every-day objects that ordinary people have donated to refugees to make them feel more welcome. 

I loved this project: it’s such a creative and beautiful way to remind people that refugees are people like us, to celebrate those who are trying to make them feel a bit more at home in their host countries – and to encourage other people and governments to follow suit and support dignity and safety for all.

After touring in various cities across Europe, including Leicester and Cambridge, the exhibition was supposed to come to London and be displayed at City Hall and Parliament, then move on to Oxford and Cardiff. But because of the sex scandal which engulfed Oxfam, the plans had to be cancelled. Oxfam was hoping for lots of media coverage and support from MPs, NGOs and members of the public. It was not to be. But Positive News still agreed to run a short piece on it and I wanted to tell a bit about the Museum here too:

A cooking pot, a pair of running shoes, coloured crayons, a skipping rope. These are some of the everyday objects that have been ‘exhibited’ in the Museum Without A Home. The touring exhibition, which can be viewed online here, celebrates acts of kindness by ordinary people towards the men, women and children who are seeking peace and sanctuary in Europe. 

The museum was originally created by the Greek section of Amnesty International and Oxfam to acknowledge the solidarity of the Greek people towards refugees. Organisers also hope to call on people – including political leaders – worldwide to support dignity and safety for all.

In autumn of 2016, the entire city of Athens was transformed into a  “museum” showcasing real objects that residents donated to refugees to make them feel welcome. Each object was accompanied by personal testimonies of the people who donated the objects and the people who received them.

Next to the photo of a board game reads the caption: “Stelios lives in Piraeus. When his school teacher proposed to the class to collect toys for the kids in the port of Piraeus, Stelios offered one of his favourite board games. He then found out that the game had reached the hands of Ishmael, a boy his age.”

Accompanying an image of a kettle reads the caption: “Vasso lives and works in Konitsa. Mafida from Syria is being hosted in the same region. When the two women met, Vasso offered a water kettle to Mafida so that she can easily heat water to wash her baby.”

Since 2016, the exhibition has travelled to Belfast, New York, Belgrade and Canada, as well as Leicester and Cambridge. Since it came to the UK, organisers displayed alongside the Greek objects several items that have been donated by the British public. Among them were a cooking pot and a quilt sewn by people from Witney, Oxfordshire, who hope to sponsor a family from Syria.

“This is a celebration of small acts of welcome and generosity, that make all the difference to refugees as they rebuild their lives in the UK,” said Sally Copley, Oxfam’s head of policy, programmes and campaigns. “We are calling on the government to extend its own hand of welcome by allowing refugees to reunite with their families in the UK.”

Refugee Exhibition: "Claiming a New Place on Earth"

If you are in London this week, please come and see our exhibition “Claiming a New Place on Earth” at Protein Studios in Shoreditch, London.  Through photographs and interviews, photographer Caroline Irby and I have recorded the journey of 10 refugees or asylum seekers aged 18-24, who arrived in the UK as minors and are now coming of age in this country. 

How is it to grow up in an Afghan village with no water and no electricity, then to find yourself alone in London at 18, not speaking a word of English?

How does it feel when life is passing you by, when you cannot get your driving license, go to university or get a job because you are waiting for your papers?

Thousands of teenagers arrive in the UK every year seeking asylum. Many have missed out on education and have been scarred by war and by having to leave their home countries.  In the UK, they have to navigate complex systems to get the support they need. Yet, they are also young people with talent, pride, aspirations and dreams.

The young refugees are from Syria, Ivory Coast, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ukraine and Uganda. They talk about the life they have left behind and their new experiences in this country - the hurdles and challenges they are facing, especially around the asylum and education systems - as well as their dreams and aspirations for the future.  They were photographed in the context of their dream job. 

The portraits and interviews are part of the exhibition “Claiming a New Place on Earth” at Protein Studios in London, Oct. 10-15 (the title is from Lesbos 2015  by poet Ruth Padel). The exhibition was commissioned and curated by Breaking Barriers (BB), a wonderful charity helping refugees to find meaningful employment.

Caroline and I have worked together on a number of humanitarian stories overseas – particularly in Africa and Asia - and in the UK.   We have a keen interest in refugee issues because we have seen some of the causes that trigger people to flee their homes. We wanted to meet some of the young refugees who have settled here to learn what propelled them to move so far, and to hear about their experiences of trying to make a new life here.  And, at a time when Brexit negotiations are pressing on and immigration is such a loaded topic, we wanted to let some young refugees tell their own stories in their own words.

This is our second collaboration with Breaking Barriers. Last year, Breaking Barriers’ exhibition portrayed refugees at the place where they first felt free or safe in the UK.

You can see some of the portraits and interviews in this Guardian article. 

How to tell the refugee story?

Khalid's story/PositiveNegatives

Migration and the refugee story are one of the most important issues of our age and will be there for a long time. Migration, the movement of people, has always existed. “The current crisis isn’t about people being refugees and migrants, the crisis is that we think of such movement of people as a crisis,” said Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist in this issue (June 2017) of New Internationalist. He is right.

  

The way the media reports on migration and the refugee story has a huge impact on how people react to them and on public policies. So, as a journalist, I keep asking myself how to best report migration. How to produce fair and balanced pieces that counter the stereotypes and misinformation, but also how to keep telling these stories in ways that are engaging and innovative.

These are so many stories about refugees and migrants out there that people become numb and turn away from them.  Yet, it is our job as journalists to keep telling those stories again and again, and to keep telling them in ways that cut through the compassion fatigue and reach our readers.

Over the past months, I’ve been looking at examples of various creative ways  to do that - some are journalism, others not.

Here are just a few, illustrating or responding to three different issues in reporting migration:

• Most refugee stories have been told in Europe in two ways: one that instills fear with unfactual or biased reporting; the other that shakes the public awake through sorrow and shock. But there is a middle ground: stories that put a face on the numbers, that humanize the immigration statistics, that show that refugees are just people like us, thrown into exceptional circumstances. And the best stories are those told by refugees themselves.

- My favourite is “A Perilous Journey: Stories of Migration” an exhibition of literary comics based on testimonies from refugees. They were created by PositiveNegatives, a wonderful non-profit, which produces literary comics, animations and podcasts about contemporary social and human rights issues, including conflict, racism, migration, trafficking and asylum.  Concentrating on contemporary real-life stories from Syria and Iraq, we follow two men and two women on their long difficult journeys fleeing conflict and persecution.  Nadia’s Story, for example, tells of a pregnant Yazidi mother, fleeing ISIS controlled Iraq with her two young children. The last panel of each story is a real photograph of the refugee, reminding us that these are real people and real stories. It is very effective and moving.  The exhibition is at SOAS’ Brunei Gallery Room: 1st Floor Gallery until June 24. Really worth a visit!

Hasko'story/PositiveNegatives

- Then there is the series of short radio episodes produced by BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, following a Syrian family from the Jordan refugee camp where they had lived for two years to Greece, then across Europe to Germany. Reporter Manveen Rana documented the twists and turns of their journey in a series of short reports – showing the good and the bad, the hopes and the challenges.  Her reports are honest, fascinating, moving, though provoking and surprising.

- Last summer, short hand-written messages were left in public places - inside coffee shops, in between the pages of books in libraries, on benches in parks and tied to lampposts and railings - or written on white boards in tube stations. They were messages of hope for a better life, written by refugees from Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries - part of a campaign by humanitarian aid agency Mercy Corps, aimed at changing the attitudes and perspectives of people around Syrian refugees and the migrant crisis in general. The campaign was particularly effective with young people, who shared the messages on Instagram and Twitter. 

 

“Sometimes it is really hard to put yourselves in the shoes of these people because it seems so distant but when I read the note it really made it sink in that this girl was not any different from me,” said Rebecca Alexander, a 21-year-old student, who saw the note of a 15-year-old Syrian refugee, hanging from a tree in London's Regent’s Park.

• People are tired of refugee stories because stories of suffering are exhausting. Stories of empathy are empowering. As are those who show refugees not just as “victims”.

- For example, millions of people shared the image of Syrian refugee Alex Assali feeding homeless people on the streets of Berlin, but very few might have read his story in a newspaper.  

When Assali, 38, woke up in his small Berlin flat one autumn morning two years ago, and checked his email, 1,000 messages waiting for him. The day before, a friend had uploaded a photograph to Facebook of Assali feeding homeless people on the streets of Berlin. The caption below read: “Acts of kindness: A Syrian refugee mans a food stand for the homeless, to ‘give something back to the German people’.”   The image went viral - it was shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook and nearly three million times on Imgur. Al Jazeera produced this interactive story, giving Assali’s backstory, and that story got no trolls, according to Yasir Khan, senior editor of digital video at Al Jazeera English.

- Then there was the “Iam a refugee" campaign, launched last summer to celebrate the contribution refugees have made, and continue to make, to life in the UK. Plaques, inspired by the English Heritage blue plaques, were placed on buildings across the UK, where selected refugees have worked or studied. The idea was to show the diversity of the refugee population and the experiences they have had, as well as the creativity, skills and knowledge that they bring to the UK.

• Stories on refugees should try to portray a range of backgrounds and experiences, even contradictory, to help the audience get a fuller picture. And it's a good idea to let refugees tell their own stories.

For this year’s Refugee Week 2017, the Higgins Bedford Art Gallery and Museum is launching ‘Voices - Different Pasts, Shared Future’, an exhibition featuring oral histories from refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants from Syria, Iraq, Rwanda and Palestine. Some of the stories are from women who are detained at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. The exhibition also includes a wonderful tapestry of objects which people have brought from their countries of origin. The objects are printed, then partly stitched by volunteers from the community and women from Yarl’s Wood. “These Voices transform personal memories into collective memories impossible to ignore,” says Josepa Munoz, the artist behind the project. 

There are too many interesting and innovative projects and ways to report on the refugee story to feature here, but feel free to add those you like…

Another Day Lost - Mapping Syrian Refugee Camps

Another Day Lost: 1,579 days and counting.../Installation by Issam Kourbaj

        
 
If you live in London, make sure to see the haunting installations by my friend, Syrian-born, Cambridge-based artist Issam Kourbaj, evoking the plight of his fellow Syrians in refugee camps scattered all over Syria and neighbouring countries. The installations are part of London-wide festival, Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture, between 11^th July and 26^th July. 

Taking the title of a Fairouz song, these five installations by Kourbaj are inspired by and based upon refugee camps. Each installation is constructed from imagined camp waste products, such as educational material, books and medical packaging, and is encircled with a fence of 1,579 burnt matches. The matches, which increase in number over the course of the exhibition, count the irretrievable days since the Syrian uprising (15th March 2011).

Another Day Lost: 1,579 days and counting.../Installation by Issam Kourbaj

By repurposing discarded materials and extinguished matches, Kourbaj laments not only the loss of time, normality and everyday life for Syrians everywhere, but also the poor quality of life experienced by his compatriots in their displacement. The installations are scattered around central London, in a pattern that loosely relates to the diaspora of refugee camps that have arisen in the countries bordering Syria over the last four years.

" I am counting the days since the uprising; it is more than 1500 days and I am still counting. My homeland, 'the country formerly known as Syria'* is torn apart; its cities are turned to dust, millions of my fellow Syrian families, women and children are daily forced to flee this largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

Though life continues in refugee camps throughout the region, with the help of many generous organisations such as UNHCR and MSF and others, the displaced millions now bear a lasting trail of visible and invisible scars caused by the conflict, the separation from their homeland and the scars of permanent loss.
Over the last four years, I have witnessed from this painful distance the way these vulnerable human beings are waiting in makeshift shelters they call home, and I fear for their lives are on hold and many are becoming citizens of a tent. "

Kourbaj was born in Syria and studied art in Damascus and St Petersburg, before settling in the UK. He currently teaches at the University of Cambridge, where he is Lector at Christ's College. Since the 2011 revolution, Kourbaj has been making work based on the horrors of the war in Syria, raising awareness and money for projects and aid in Syria.

The catalogue of Another Day Lost is on sale at each location, with contributions by Nabil Almulhem, Paul Connerton, Tarek Fustok, Kevin Hart, Martin Johnson, Tim Knox, Issam Kourbaj, Louisa Macmillan, Polly Markandya, Bill Norris, Eva Schmitt, Eckhard Thiemann, Laurence Topham, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa and Lucy Winkett. Proceeds will go to MSF and UNHCR. You can also donate to these charities directly, as well as to preorder artworks to be made out of these installations after the exhibition finishes.


 *As described in The Economist, "Syria's civil war: The country formerly known as Syria" (23rd February, 2013).  

Another Day Lost: 1,579 days and counting.../Installation by Issam Kourbaj

Conversation with the artist St James's Church, Piccadilly Wednesday 22nd July 6:30–7:30pm Issam Kourbaj in conversation with curator Louisa Macmillan at St James's Church, Piccadilly (free, no booking required, donations most welcome)
St James's Day celebrations St James's Church, Piccadilly Sunday 26th Julyfrom 1pm Members of the public are invited to join in the deinstallation of one of the camps, with opportunity to buy some of the artworks, as part of the St James's Day celebrations at St James's Church

LOCATIONS
St James's Church
197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL Mon–Sat 9am–6pm. Sun 1–6pm
10 Golborne Road
10 Golborne Road, London W10 5PE Mon–Sun 10am–6pm
Goethe-Institut London
50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, SW7 2PH Mon–Fri 8:30am–7pm. Sat8:30am–5pm
Heath Street Baptist Church
84 Heath Street, London NW3 1DN Mon–Sun 10am–6pm
Central Books
99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN Mon–Fri 9am–5pm. Sat 11th July 9am–5pm


-->Supported by: Goethe Institute, St James's Church Piccadilly, Heath Street Baptist Church, Central Books, Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts