The Art of Resistance: Defending Academic Freedom since 1933 | Page 122

Working with Young Syrian Refugees Sina Ata

This photo was one of a series taken to capture ‘artwork’ created
by Syrian youths in the Jordanian King Abdulla Park Refugee
Camp. It houses 1,500 of the estimated 200,000 Syrian refugees
currently (August 2013) living in Jordan’s refugee camps.
The artwork was produced as part of a workshop that I helped to
run aimed at helping the young participants address the complex
emotions they were experiencing; the result of the unimaginable
violence and suffering that had forced them to flee their homes and
separated them from loved ones.
The challenge was that most had no experience of ‘doing’ art.
I got them to lie down on large sheets of paper and take turns
in drawing each other’s body outlines. They then cut out their
own outline to create a stencil through which their forms could
be sprayed on to the wall of the Camp. They were then invited to
graffiti the word ENA (meaning ‘me’ in Arabic) in the centre of their
spray-painted images, as well as other sentences or words that
captured their thoughts, hopes and dreams.
The text on this particular ENA reads ‘pure hearts might go
through pain, they might get wounded, but they will never hate’.
A powerful message of hope from a young person who has been
through so much. The results were impressive. Their work was full
of colour and motion, a form of self-expression that helped to make
the space their own, reflecting the interaction between feelings and
surroundings, and creating a sense of pride and self.
Sadly, not all were as enthusiastic and, once the paintings had
been completed, other young Camp refugees who had chosen not
to participate attempted to erase the images, echoing the same
ambivalence of emotion, experience and suffering.

120 The Art of Resistance? Defending Academic Freedom