BEHJAT OMER ABDULLA is a Kurdish mixed media artist based in Sweden, working with drawing, photography and video installation. From a Distance (2016) are a series of graphite drawings depicting the story of a tragic sea crossing that the artist heard whilst spending time with the residents of a refugee camp.
South African and British artists BROOMBERG & CHANARIN will present a 12 minute film, The Bureaucracy of Angels (2017), which records the demolition of 100 migrant boats in Sicily during the winter of 2016 and rescue missions by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) foundation off the coast of Libya. The Bureaucracy of Angels was commissioned for Art on the Underground, Transport for London’s public art programme.
VICTORIA BURGHER is a British multi-disciplinary artist whose work ranges from sculptural installations and site-specific interventions to collaborative public ventures. Surviving (2019) is an installation of hundreds of fragments of a foil survival blanket cast in ceramic and laminated with gold leaf.
MAX HIRZEL is an Italian photojournalist based in Italy. In 2015 he began a long term project entitled Migrant Bodies. Forensic investigations are rarely carried out on the bodies of unidentified migrants. Migrant Bodies documents the unusual story of forensic attempts to trace 450 of the victims from 'the boat of innocents', in which between 700- 1100 lives were lost on April 18, 2015 in the Mediterranean. The boat is currently on display at the Venice Biennale.
MARIWAN JALAL is a Kurdish mixed-media artist based in the UK. Faces of Sea (2017) are a series of screen prints based on Jalal’s personal experience of travelling to the UK by sea. Messages from the Sea (2019) are a series of scroll-like ceramic works with burnt edges, reminiscent of the Dead Sea scrolls but covered in images relating to migrant deaths at sea.
TAMARA KAMETANI is a Slovakian artist based in the UK who makes installation, video and photography works based on issues around migration and migrant deaths at sea. Half a Mile from Lampedusa (2017) is a cyanotype of underwater video footage shot by the Italian navy to record the scene of the 3rd October 2013 shipwreck in the Mediterranean.
NIKOLAJ BENDIX SKYUM LARSEN is a Danish artist based in Paris. Larsen will show photographic works and a video from his installation End of Dreams (2015), a monument to the thousands of migrants who die in the Mediterranean whilst trying to come to Europe.
GIL MUALEM-DORON is an Israeli artist based in the UK. Eucharist (2016) are a series of porcelain plates printed with digital collage referring to the plight of refugees in the Mediterranean and the UK's colonial past. The plates are presented on reclaimed wood found on Dover’s coastline.
FORENSIC OCEANOGRAPHY will present the The Left-to-die boat case, in which 63 migrants died whilst drifting in a boat for 14 days in a NATO surveillance area. The Left-to-die boat (2014) uses surveillance footage and interviews with one of the survivors to create a video analysis of events. Forensic Oceanography are part of the international group Forensic Architecture, shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2018.
MAYA RAMSAY is an artist based in the UK who will be presenting works from her Arts Council England funded project Countless (2016-2018) working with migrant’s graves and shipwrecked migrant boats. Ramsay will also show a short film Leave or Remain | Taraka aw Baqqa | ترک او البقا made on a shipwrecked migrant boat and found objects from 'boat graveyards’.
MARIO ROSSI is an artist based in the UK. Rossi will present Annex: IMO circular #11 (2012) from his series of paintings of the sea made over print outs from the International Maritime Organisation’s reports detailing ‘unsafe practices associated with the trafficking or transport of migrants by sea’.
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SHORSH SALEH is a mixed media Kurdish artist, carpet designer and weaver based in the UK. His works focus on the subject of migration, borders and identity. Saleh will present miniature paintings, employing traditional techniques in a contemporary context to express his experiences of living in a conflict zone and the journeys that refugees make.
AIDA SILVESTRI is an Eritrean-Italian artist based in the UK. Silverstri’s photographic project Even This Will Pass (2013-14) depicts the journeys of Eritrean refugees from their homeland to the UK. Her series of blurred portraits are inscribed with the journey that each sitter took in order to reach the UK, alongside a text detailing the sitter's account of the journey.
NATHANIEL WHITE is a British artist. His work Routes (2017) uses data from the International Organisation for Migration to create a photographic record of the sites where migrants died in the Mediterranean between January 2014 and November 2018. Each image represents an individual's death.
LUCY WOOD is a British artist. For her project TO6411 (2013), she set sail on a 4000 mile solo voyage in a rescued migrant boat from Lampedusa, arriving in London nearly four months later. T06411 will be moored on the canal near to P21 Gallery. Wood will also be showing sculpture and wall based works in the gallery.
DAGMAWI YIMER is an Ethiopian filmmaker who settled in Italy and co-founded AMM, which produces written and audio-visual narratives made by migrants about their experiences, enabling them to participate directly in the dissemination of their own stories and testimonies. Yimer’s seventeen minute animation film ASMAT – Names in memory of all sea victims is a poignant and hypnotic tribute to the 368 lives lost at sea off the coast of Lampedusa on 3 October 2013.
ART REFUGE UK are a charity offering specialist art and art therapy spaces to people who have been displaced due to war, persecution and poverty, both while in transit and once they have reached their hoped for destination. They have been working in Calais since 2015 with refugees living in transit on the France-UK border, with a particular focus on unaccompanied young people. Art Refuge UK will present images of works made by unaccompanied teenagers from Eritrea and Sudan.
