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DRAWING TIME
A series of hand-painted images on cloth, displayed on a reconstructed refugee tent by #TheDirars. The art installation recreates one family’s journey from war-torn Darfur in Western Sudan, then conflict in Libya, and four years in a refugee camp, before resettlement in the UK.
Arafa, a single mother, and her children Omar, Gaida, Mayas, Ethar, Akram and Waeeil fled across borders in cars and in the backs of trucks, eventually reaching the UNHCR Salloum refugee camp in Egypt.
The recreated tent is similar to the one the family occupied at the camp where Arafa encouraged her children to continue their love of drawing and illustration. Art brought colour into their lives in the dusty desert camp. It occupied the days, weeks, months and years waiting to find a place of sanctuary. Soon the walls of their tent became a visual gallery of coping with a life in limbo.
Drawing Time was first shown at Hull Freedom Festival 2018 hosted by the Wilberforce Institute Hull.
