In Search of a Refugee Political Voice: A Cultural Analysis of Refugee Art
BY MAYA THOMPSON
Refugees and asylum seekers have been the cornerstones of certain political discourses and the foils to national identities across the world. Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman in the United Kingdom, Marine Le Pen in France, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy are only some examples of politicians who have sought to wield the European refugee crisis, which began in 2015, and the difficulties it has entailed to their own political advantage. As a timely example of this ‘politics of refugees’, the UK government announced a new ‘Illegal Migration Bill’ earlier this month which guarantees the detainment and removal of “those arriving in the UK illegally, either to Rwanda or another "safe" third country”. Although amply justified, this article does not aim to join in with the outrage at the UK government’s apprehension of the refugee crisis over the past years, nor does it seek to further explicate the complex political machinations of which refugees are too often victim. Rather, it asks a question: where is the political voice of refugees? So often a core part of public debates, rarely are refugee voices and perspectives seen to emerge in national or international political spaces. What avenues do refugees have to voice not only their political concerns but their own individual or collective identities? Here I explore the role of art as an attempt to sound a refugee voice.
No Voice (2019) by Masoumeh Jafari, an Afghan refugee in Moria camp, Greece.
At the heart of these interrogations is the notion of a collective refugee identity: what does the development of refugee art and culture mean for our understanding of refugees? Traditionally culture is defined as the symbolic sphere of a single community, society, or nation. But the refugee experience is both inherently multiple, determined by the fragmentation of peoples, and fairly universal, in that it induces a shared experienced for all those affected. I understand refugee art as an attempt to mend deep cultural and political ruptures within these fragmented communities. Without generalising all art created by refugees as the same or as having identical goals, this article draws some parallels between the efforts of different artists from different backgrounds to place their experiences within the notion of a refugee political voice.
What place does refugee art have in local, national, and international cultures? Often remaining on the margins of mainstream culture, fragments of the art which delves into the refugee experience arrive to our eyes and ears in different ways. One of the most prominent mediums for this expression seems to be feature films and documentaries. Flee (2021) is feature-length animated documentary about a man under the alias Amin Nawabi and his childhood experience of fleeing his home in Afghanistan and of a perilous journey across the continent to Denmark. Directed by Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen, the film’s narrative, music, and animated art all serve to portray this singular story and to focus attention on a refugee voice. Critically acclaimed upon its release at Sundance Film Festival in 2021, Flee has since received awards and nominations at festivals across the world, including three Academy Award nominations in 2022. However, one sticking point remains: how accessible is the film to wider audiences? If few others outside of a select sphere of those who attend festivals and visit independent cinemas have viewed and appreciated it, is the film truly successful in furthering a refugee political and cultural voice?
Take a different example: A World Not Ours (2012) is a documentary in which director Mahdi Fleifel captures the lives of his family and friends in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh in Lebanon. The film transports us directly into the fractured and entrapped spaces of the refugee camp and brings to light the opinions, desires, and dreams of the different people we come across. It acts as both an intimate narrative tool or diary for the filmmaker and as a mode of transmission to outside audiences, especially because the film is available on Netflix. This point is of particular interest: Is Netflix’s decision to release a line of films which deal with the Palestinian experience a crucial part of internationalizing refugee voices? These are important questions about the ways in which we access culture, to which I do not have direct answers, that are necessary to understand the existence and place of a refugee political voice.
Poster for A World Not Ours (2012) directed by Mahdi Fleifel
Films are not the only artistic medium through which refugee voices may be constructed. The image headlining this article was part of a fundraising initiative which took place in London in January 2020 and involved the exhibition and auctioning of art created by refugees living in Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Among other works which can be seen in the article linked below, No Voice is a painting by Masoumeh Jafari of Setayesh, a young Afghan girl living in Iran as a refugee who was kidnapped, raped, and killed by an Iranian man. No Voice, ironically, says something about the ongoing traumatization and silencing of refugees. It challenges the legitimacy of systems which allow these tragedies to happen, which let girls like Setayesh, in the words of Masoumeh, “cry in silence because justice didn’t defend them,” - and it does all this as art, as a cultural artifact which may help the fractured yet collective experiences of refugees to heal, bond, and form a voice.
My article thus culminates into one question: is art an effective means through which refugees and refugee narratives can insert themselves in political spaces? I would argue that yes, it most certainly is, but perhaps only with the help of those already in control of mainstream cultural spaces and their efforts to push these perspectives to the fore. There is no single refugee voice; there are many. Yet the picture I have painted here highlights a similar struggle to create refugee art and cultural spaces for a stronger sense of self-identification and to challenge dominant political discourses.
Sources and Further Reading:
Sources:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-53734793
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