DISPLAYced: Exhibition and Celebration

I attended the DISPLAYced: Exhibition and Celebration academic event at TRISM on Wednesday March 27th. The event was an art exhibition featuring refugee artists from the community that brought light to the issue within our world and helped raise money for the Community Refugee & Immigration Services, CRIS.

The artists were all from different countries and all used different stylistic approaches to creating their artworks. The artists included Bol Aweng from South Sudan, Orisha Nnani from Nigeria, Bamazi Talle from Togo, Nora Musu from Liberia, Tariq Tarey from Somalia, Denis Kasaza from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Said Tameem from Iraq, and Abessolo Ayem from Cameroon.

I enjoyed the artwork and the different styles and forms ranging from photography, painting, sculpture, and even pen and paper. Some of the works that stood out to me was Human Hearts: A Visual Art Collection by Talle Bamazi that was completely drawn with black and blue pens. This piece shows that there is no excuse for not creating artwork, and anything  can be created from the simplest of materials. Additionally, the meaning behind the usage of the pens were connected to the financial stability of Talle. Talle received most of the used pens after a visit to the bank trip that added to the artists growth and increasing money as a new refugee in the community. Another artwork that I enjoyed was painted by Orisha Nnani’s with acrylic on canvas. The painting depicts the horrors within her country in a beautiful and shocking manner. It is accompanied with the inscription “Eburv Ozv Nwa Onye Ozo. Odika Ukwv nev (when they carry the dead body of someone else’s child, it looks like a bundle of sticks)”. The painting is realistic and depicts a graphic representation of a woman cut and killed from conflict within her country.

The artworks were accompanied by creative ways for donating to the Columbus organization CRIS. There was information about refugees in Columbus and the United States that suggested donation rates that were actually data about refugees. Some of the shocking statistics included  that only one in five hundred of the world’s refugees were resettled in 2018 and that 68.5 million individuals have been forcibly displaced worldwide. Specifically in Columbus the refugee population increased by 245 people last year with 48.4% of all refugees in Ohio resettling in Franklin County. The combination of the artwork, the information, and the cultural experience shared from these members of our community was effective. The art exhibit was a great event that provided insight into personal experiences from refugees in our Columbus community through beautiful artworks.