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How did you get into this project? What drew you
into it in the first place?
What really drew me to it was years and years of being
exposed to the narratives of people who were forcibly
displaced in various parts of the world. What I began to
see in the images was there were stories in people’s gazes.
A lot of my work was portraiture at the time. It began to
frame the way I was seeing these people. Refugees live in
fear of war, of reprisal, of their future, and of a vast and
uncertain present. They are not only victims, but also
people trying to find a home in a way that is valiant and
heroic. They have a sense of humor, take great care of
their dignity, communicate with others and with me in
a way that was profoundly human, and of course they
are survivors.
Were there commonalities of the narratives of the
refugees that you spoke to?
Yes, there were many commonalities. One is what I call
the geography of fear. Refugees are moving across the
border, which represents a very scary place. The second
is the notion of dislocation. Refugees are people who
have suffered great loss. The third is the quest of home.
Everyone who is a refugee is attempting to recreate a
sense of home.
In your work, how have you approached political and
contested subject matter such as this?
I am really interested in documenting invisibility, the way
that refugees are not seen, rather than a critical moment.
At the end of the day they are not refugees, but actual
people. There is something about that invisibility that
is very hard to get at in this present political discourse.
We are looking at least sixty-five million people who are
displaced worldwide for one reason or another. Before
they are dislocated, they are diverse in terms character
as any one of us in the city of Chicago, or the United
States for that matter.
Have you seen perceptions of people being displaced
change over time?
I think that there are larger discourses around refuge,
flight, and migration that have dominated and challenged
different societies. If we look at the mass migration of
asylum-seekers, especially in 2014, 2015 and 2016, there
was an initial societal acceptance. What took place in
Europe was that state institutions had a difficult time
dealing with the large numbers of new arrivals. We
saw an unprecedented movement of people assisting
refugees, but we also saw another group of people who
thought that the state institutions were crumbling and
that refugees were presenting a threat. In the US we see
a similar similarities. There are caring people trying to
welcome refugees into their homes. At the same time,
there is a lot of fear. Inmany ways, perhaps this exhibition
is trying to demystify perceptions of refugees. These are
human beings. These are people that have gone through
a great deal. Let’s begin to pierce that veil, so to speak, in
order to understand how refugees have been rendered
invisible by political discourse, by social discourse, and
by history. Then begin to step back and say, “Who are
you?” Let’s begin to have a dialogue. I hope this exhibition
will show the humanity, souls, and circumstances of
these refugees.
What do you think your responsibility is as an artist
with this kind of subject matter?
It’s to do my very best to relay what I’ve seen and felt, both
as ideas, but also as images that convey an experience.
How did you decide on the exhibition title, “They
Arrived Last Night?”
I spent a great deal of time speaking with people who
literally had arrived last night. Sudanese who crossed
the border into South Sudan. An Ethiopian woman in
Calais who arrived and wanted to make the crossing
into England. Syrians who crossed into Jordan. The list
is extensive. There was always an openness about them,
especially in that moment of arrival. That moment of
feeling safe from an immediate past, but also extremely
unsure of the future, was a concept I felt obligated
to explore.