Loading ...Syrian children create art to bring resolution to their tormented past
Every Friday around a dozen children gather together to paint the bright murals now scattered across the walls of their new home, illustrating their thoughts, their hopes, their experiences of living in the war-stricken country of Syria.
The once blank stone walls are now coated in vibrant colour, disguising the cold, furniture-less rooms. Disguising the fact that these children live in an abandoned prison.
Two years ago, over 240 Syrian refugee families fled and settled in what is now called the Akre refugee camp in Iraq, an old abandoned prison they have taken as their new home. The prison, described as a “temporary home” for the refugees, is nestled quietly beneath large, looming mountains and once held the “political dissidents” under the extremist president, Saddam Hussein.
Fourteen-year-old Soleen, one of the children living and painting in the camp said, “For any picture we paint, there is meaning behind it. And we want people to come and ask us about the meaning of our pictures and why we’ve painted them.”
Soleen, unlike many of the children who have been introduced to the art at the camp, painted before she and her family became some of the thousands of Syrian refugees. Yet her approach and perception of art and the subjects she paints is different now; “In Syria I was already learning how to draw, but what we learned there was different. In Syria, we drew nature and trees, but here what we draw is different, we are learning new things.”
New Zealand native, Lucy Tyndell of Castle Art has been supporting the children’s artistic efforts since April 2014, and likens the project to the Berlin Wall of East Germany: “there was a population that wanted to get to the other side of the wall, and that’s exactly what Akre is at the same time. You have a whole group of people here who want a better life and who want to leave, to go home.”
The walls, hallways, corridors and cells of the prison are covered in pink, blue, yellow, red, green paints, inspired by the likes of Banksy, Thierry Noir and Stick, but assuredly hold their own style and stance in street art.
Speaking about her first encounters with the children and their art, Tyndell admitted that the images they initially drew shocked her; “Two-thirds of their pictures were of death and destruction, people being shot, just horrendous scenes. But after meetings with the community, we decided to focus on positive imagery. So when Nadrine, one of the children involved in the project, shows us a sketch of a bird in a cage that she wants to paint as a mural, for instance, I’ll suggest painting the door of the cage open and the bird flying out.”
The end product shows a painted brick wall and a bird flying between the crevices of thick metal bars to freedom, with the outstretched arms and bright face of a person watching it leave – a decidedly bittersweet image from the imagination of a child.
But despite the heartbreak and the traumatic events that led to the paintings across the stone walls and ceilings of the prison, there is a unity that the art has brought for the children and the families living there. “In the beginning, I didn’t know anyone from the project,” said Soleen, speaking about how the art has turned the camp into a home, “but we’ve grown into a family. We take care of each other. Because we paint together, we respect each other.”
One Castle Art volunteer, Valerie Bembry spoke about the hope and shaded beauty the artwork has brought to the community, saying “Hopefully, one day […] this facility will remain as a testament to the dark history of the Saddam era, and this change of what these kids did over time. I can see this becoming a museum of sorts, with people coming to learn about who lived here and how they managed to transform this space.”
Source: www.the-newshub.com