Refugee artists and memories of displacement: a visual semiotics analysis

Abstract

This article considers the ways in which displaced artists represent the experience of displacement, their cultural traditions and the longing for home through paintings and how, by doing so, they become the visual interpreters of the current refugee crisis. The starting point of this article is that little attention has been paid towards the visual narratives of artworks produced by refugee artists and shared on online open platforms like, for example, Facebook. Through the visual semiotics analysis of 150 images of paintings (exhibited on the Facebook page Syria.Art) and through a number of individual interviews with the artists who produced such artworks, the article identifies three emerging visual narratives. These are concerned primarily with reminiscences about people, places and cultural practices lost (or in danger of being lost) because of forced journeys and displacement. Within this context, these visual discourses become part of an open repository, which mediates, re-organizes and preserves memories, both personal and collective, as a form of emotional survival and resilience. It is argued that these visual narratives and representations nurture empathy for the human condition of the refugees and universalize the migrant experience.