Australian artist Fintan Magee recently visited the city of Amman in Jordan accompanied by the good people from the AptArt association in order to bring some new lift into the Azraq refugee camp.
Inside Azraq Refugee camp there is a space for children who arrive without their parents. All the stories are different. Some children lost their parents in the war, others lost them in transit across the border and some have parents than can not or no longer wish to care for them. The kids stay in a specific space that is an orphanage of sorts. They are not permitted to leave this space until they are either 18 or they are reunified with their parents. The space is in the desert camp with stark white pre-fabricated containers. Together with Fintan Magee, Jordanian artist Suhaib Attar and the kids, they painted their space. AptArt covered every bit of white space with colour.
After the project in the refugee camp, Fintan painted a wall in Suhaib’s neighborhood of East Amman. He painted one of the kids we worked with. Fintan titled the piece THE EXILE. Below is some text specifically for the wall.
After more than 5 years of war in Syria, the death and destruction continues unabated. More than half of Syria’s people have fled their homes. In search of refuge they wait at closed borders and for deadly sea crossings.
Refugees do not arrive at destinations, but rather at waiting places. They wait for the war to stop and for food and water to be distributed, for paperwork to be processed, for a permit to work or to attend a school. They wait for their lives to resume. They wait for news of death. Syrians are stuck between a world they knew that no longer exists and a future they cannot start. They are trapped in the waiting place.
Inspired by Syrian children confined to refugee camps in Jordan, Fintan Magee painted a girl who had lost her parents fleeing Syria. Alongside a fading reflection of her past life she gazes into a future that is unknown.
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