Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 3, Spring 2020 | Page 39

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Figure 2. Hoda Afshar, Remain (still), 2018. Two-channel digital video, colour, sound.
Image courtesy and © the artist and Milani Gallery.
Through staged images, words and poetry, Remain documents the men’s individual and
shared stories about violence, hopelessness, suicide, and murder on Manus Island as well
as their dreams of freedom (Afshar 2018); drawing attention to the “ramifications of
national policy on the human rights of the individual” (University of Queensland Art
Museum 2019). Shamindan Kanapadhi, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee who has been detained
on the island for almost five years, describes in the artwork the desperation he has
witnessed; how “people have swallowed [razor] blades, drunk shampoo and washing
powder” and died of suicide. Kanapadhi’s stark words disrupt the hyper-serenity of the
lush green tropical vegetation against which he stands; vegetation which is described
elsewhere in Remain as a “green hell”. The contrasts continue as clear blue water laps
at a seemingly lifeless body (Figure 1), reminiscent of a pietà, haunting in its lamentation
of human vulnerability. In another scene (Figure 2), sand slips through the hands
of Behrouz Boochani�a Kurdish–Iranian author who has been detained on Manus
Island for five years�emphasising a sense of futility and the desolation of the men’s
predicament.
Afshar (in Jefferson 2019) describes Remain as a process of “staged documentary”, where
she works with “real people in real spaces, allowing them to re-enact their narratives
with their own bodies and giving them autonomy to narrate their own stories”. The coauthorship
of Remain provides an opportunity for these men to communicate the range
and impact of their experiences in an alternative form outside the legal and bureaucratic
frameworks of detention; drawing on art as a mode of activism (see Rush and Simić
2014); as a way of opening up new spaces of discussion (something which is advocated
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