Exhibit’s spotlight shines on ‘vitality’ of Syrian refugees
At age 17, Hani Al Moulia left the war-ravaged city of Homs in his native Syria and relocated to a refugee camp in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. A UN program in the camp introduced the young man to photography. Jump ahead and Mr. Moulia is now a resident of Saskatchewan, celebrated for his unique take on portraits capturing the refugee and immigrant experience, as well as having a seat on Justin Trudeau’s Prime Minister’s Youth Council advisory group.
Quite an achievement for someone who is legally blind and a picture-perfect story to frame the West Vancouver Museum’s Home/Shelter/Belonging exhibition featuring Al Moulia’s works, as well as that of Sylvia Grace Borda, Jim Breukelman, Germaine Koh, Annie Pootoogook, Itee Pootoogook and Gu Xiong.
Part of the Canada 150 events taking place across the country, Home/ Shelter/Belonging examines ideas of how the country was developed by a process of both settlement/colonization of immigrants who left their countries of origin by choice or necessity and First Nations communities displaced by this process.
“The exhibition is in two parts, with the first being at the museum featuring the works of seven artists from culturally diverse backgrounds dealing specifically with the idea of home in their work,” said West Vancouver Museum administrator/ curator Darrin Morrison. “And the second part of it is an off-site component working with the Harmony Arts Festival, where we are bringing an innovative new Swedish-designed emergency shelter by the organization The Better Shelter to Canada for the first time and showcasing the work of Hani Al Moulia in it.”
The museum is actually the first to showcase the Better Shelter design here. Built to be easy to ship and assemble, the structure is nonetheless far sturdier than the simple tents or modified yurts that predominate temporary housing in camps. While tents are quick to set up and provide some sort of cover, the Better Shelter is more effective for the contemporary situations of so many refugee camps that have become longer-term settlements with clear infrastructure needs around handling extremes of weather and so on.
Morrison admits it’s an unusual acquisition for a museum archive and one that took several months of “middle-of-the-night phone calls to finally purchase one and get it shipped to Canada.” There is already a waiting list of other museums who would like to feature the shelter in exhibits. Hopefully, it will generate dialogue around humanitarian needs and getting four walls around those in need as a “step up over a far more vulnerable tent.
“Hani documented daily life in the camp he lived in for three years in Lebanon and the photographs are remarkable in how they capture the human spirit in all its vitality even in the face of such adversity,” said Morrison.
The Better Shelter section is a bit of a teaser for everything from Grace Borda’s study of a Scottish-planned community with Canadian place names to West Van artist Breukelman’s original Hot Properties series of photos of houses from the late 1980s that looked at specific designs built in the postwar era.