This image is part of “Belonging: Voices of London’s Refugees” (through February 2007), a powerful new exhibit at the Museum of London that captures the refugee experience in the British capital. Drawing on more than 150 interviews in 15 languages, the result is a fascinating mosaic of the cultures representing London today. “The voices of refugees are often missing from the debate about immigration [in this country] so we wanted to inject them back into the discussion,” says Annette Day, the exhibition’s curator.
And it is, literally, their voices that make the most dramatic statement. The museum entrance is designed to look like an airport arrivals hall, with audio speakers playing the voices of some refugees. There are four large pods where visitors can listen to others tell their stories, and watch films. Each pod has a specific theme–London, families, communities, the world–and some of the participants speak in their native tongues. Wahida Zalmai tells, in Dari, about escaping the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
A timeline along the front wall gives a sense of just how many refugees have found their way to London. It begins in 1881 with the influx of Russian Jews fleeing pogroms, extends through the 20th century–from the 250,000 Belgians who left their country during World War I to the 28,600 Ugandans expelled in the 1970s under Idi Amin–and ends with modern-day refugees to London. Interspersed throughout are photographs; in one black-and-white snap taken in 2002, two men at a demonstration wear placards that read ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS.
The exhibit does not shy away from depicting the anger or ambivalence of the refugee. “I think every day about Bosnia,” says Zaim Pasic, a Sarajevan who was evacuated to London after being blinded in one eye by a grenade in 1993. “Our community here has been good to us but I do not have the friends who I have known since I was a teen.” Day says that it’s important to show that refugees do not come as blank slates. “They have values, skills, education, history and are a million miles from the stereotypes.”
A poem on display echoes the frustrations of being a stranger in a strange land. “In the homeland a rebellion, in the host-land a nuisance,” writes Wondimu Me-Konnen, an Ethiopian who came over in 1998. “Wasted talent lost wisdom, barred by an invisible wall.” This compelling new show helps foster the kind of understanding needed to break down that barrier.
