2021 Feeling welcome mural - Missoula, MT
In this current global context, there is a need for acknowledgment, communication, compassion, and harmony. My hope for the Feeling Welcome mural is to create a visual dialogue and links between refugees and Montana community members. This painting is an invitation to community conversations around migration, diversity, inclusion, the sense of belonging, identity re-negotiation, and togetherness.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2019, “nearly one person is forcibly displaced every two seconds as a result of conflict or persecution.” Being displaced means losing the sense of home and belonging, and one’s identity in exchange for a new one. There is a complex process of adaptation to the new host country: learning a new language; passing a long and substantial background/health check process; getting a permit to work and finding a workplace; redefining the notion of community and building a new one; learning new habits and ways of life, sometimes a total reversal of one’s former culture; redefining former systems; learning laws and about societal expectations; learning how to pass possible racial lenses; renegotiate and internally accept loss (of family, friends, native culture, status, etc); work through contradictions, confusion, feeling of displacement, loneliness and alienation due to the lack of support and losing the sense of home.
Thanks to ZACC and my inclusion in this mural project, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the incredible staff and refugees at Softlanding Misoula. After talking with some of the Missoula refuges, it seemed to me that they all shared the same ideas: in order to feel welcome and integrated in this new world, they need the opportunity to continue practicing some of the habits and rituals at some level, eat and share traditional food dishes, wear or share national costumes, make new friends, have a connection with the new community, be able to work or activate in the new society and find their own stabile place there.
My Feeling Welcome mural design is the result of these conversations. Here you can find elements that represent Eritrea, Congo, Iraq, and Syria. In addition, there are abstract elements used to symbolize different aspects of migration: leggo/puzzle elements like the character’s head on the left side illustrate the idea of adjustment/reconsideration/ one has to adapt and change in order to fit into a new world; abstract marks in the background – the feeling of drift. The house upside down – a symbol of how one feels right at the beginning when moving to a new world when everything might feel upside-down. Upright shelf with memories from the past that are there to help in this transformative moment.
My mural is a site-responsive work. Cracks, missing concrete blocks in the wall, gas meters, birds nesting above the building, bugs visiting – they all informed my design. Only after adding the pipes, I realized how they mirror the pipes on the ZACC building.
While painting, refuges from the Masala restaurant were coming to ask questions. I didn’t know they are there, they didn’t know I’m here to paint about them. I had wonderful experiences like the moment when I was drawing a map, and a kid passed by and enthusiastically said “hey, that’s my country;” he was from Eritrea, and I was drawing an Eritrea map. Some refugees couldn’t speak EN, so we used a voice to text app or Google translate for communication. A Syrian refuge brought as cookies. Local people and tourists stopped to ask questions – these are all meaningful experiences that changed me.
Refugees or not, today we all live with an acute sense of uncertainty and disorientation, at a personal but also global level. For a better reaction to future major changes and a good life, it is important to widen our understanding of current life and the world we live in, learn from each other, hone our instincts, and develop new skills to navigate these transitions.
