Unbeknownst to most people, there are millions of migrants and refugees seeking not only shelter and security, but also ways and means to eventually rebuild their lives and overcome the hardships they had to endure in their war-torn countries. Yet, their sufferings do not immediately end when they flee their homelands. They continue to experience new challenges, hardships, and difficulties as they try to settle in the new country they fled in. After all, it isn’t easy to pick up the pieces of your life in a foreign country with different culture, belief, and language.
In fact, many of the women refugees are “isolated, depressed, don’t want to go out and they don’t mix with others and they often live in fear. They are vulnerable migrant and refugee women and they can easily be pushed into something nasty if they are not supported in the right way,” says Mahreen, an asylum-seeker from Islamabad, Pakistan.
In the hopes of helping these women get past their tragic journeys and rebuild their lives in the UK, Arts Council and National Lottery funded an art exhibit project called Migration Blanket. Migration Blanket features creative works by refugee women from Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Senegal. Through several creative sessions, these women were able to tell their stories through art and were enabled to somehow express their feelings and thoughts that are too painful to share.
“These kind of creative activities have helped me change my perception of life and the way I see myself. I know I have something to contribute to the community. This project has given me a way to express my feelings when it’s just too painful for me to speak about what I’ve been through. This is the first time I’m taking part in an art project with an exhibition and I feel very proud. It’s good for all of us, it’s giving us more confidence. I want to share my story so that people can understand us better and we learn from each other and live together in harmony. But the women need more support and more activities like this,” Mahreen says.
Joining them in the project is international artist and activist, Salma Zulfiqar, whose aim with the ‘Migration Blanket’ exhibition is to bring people closer through art: “We live in a world where hatred is increasing and my project aims to bring people closer together by creating better understanding of cultures through art.”
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