Fresh view of migrant communities
Look through lens at refugees and their stories
The unveiling of a collection of photographs for display at Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-po this week representing the struggles of refugees and migrants comes at a time when the Horowhenua community is about to embrace a refugee quota of its own.
That serendipity was not lost on the artist, Ehsan Hazaveh, whose exhibition titled Mementos was an attempt to raise awareness and challenge refugee stereotypes by amplifying their voice through the medium of photography.
More than 70 Colombian refugees would be welcomed into the Horowhenua community over the coming year, the first of whom are a family group of seven due to arrive in the coming months.
Hazaveh is an independent Iranian photographer based in Wellington whose photography work highlights the challenges faced by overseas migrants and refugees.
He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Tehran in 2015 and has just finished his PhD in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.
“I became aware of the immense difficulties these communities had to deal with in their daily lives,” he said.
“My personal experiences with marginalised communities . . . motivated me to document their stories, which are seldom told in the media.”
In 2012 he studied for a Masters in Graphic Design. By studying advertising photography, he gained an understanding of the function of photographs in areas like advertising and social media.
While taking photos of people commercially he became aware of the power of photography to “idealise and distort social phenomena”.
He moved to New Zealand in 2018 to pursue his interest in representing marginal communities.
“I soon realised that because many of us are unfamiliar with refugees’ experiences, our knowledge of them is highly dependent on mass media,” he said.
“However, refugees are given limited opportunities to speak directly about their experiences. Instead, they are spoken about and represented as silent actors and victims.”
Mementos is an attempt to raise awareness of, and challenge dominant stereotypes about, refugees by amplifying the voices of former refugees, he said.
Hazaveh said he was honoured to have his work on display in a community centre, where it had the opportunity to be more widely viewed than it might be in a gallery, and that was important to its purpose.
“When we come from different backgrounds we have different perspectives. Different people offer different perspectives, and they also offer different solutions,” he said.
“You don’t have to change your perspective, only widen your own perspective. These stories show a diverse range of life experiences.”
The exhibition opened this week with a powhiri by Muau¯poko. Among those attending the hui at the same time were Immigration and Refugee Support manager Sarah Ward, National Refugee manager Andrew Lockhart, and community adviser Mohamud Mohamed.
There was a lot of work going on behind the scenes by community leaders working together to prepare for and assist with the assimilation of the incoming refugees to Horowhenua.