Artistic Representations of Refugees: What Is the Role of the Artist?

ABSTRACT

The literature on ethical considerations for artists involved in collaborative projects with refugees and asylum seekers is sparse, indicating a lack of robust discussions on the ethical pitfalls artists may encounter in such endeavours. Based on the first author’s reflections on her subjective experiences as an artist representing the story of a young Somali asylum seeker woman through collaborative filmmaking, this paper aims to open up broader discussions about artists’ responsibilities to produce counter-narratives that value refugees’ perspectives and voices. By doing so, artists can avoid perpetuating existing tropes that can at times be detrimental to refugees and asylum seekers, and ensure that artists’ own agendas are secondary to what ‘protagonists’ wish to convey. We suggest five simple ways of realising this goal: genuine collaboration; informed consent; anonymity; focusing on the mundane; and (in the case of filmmaking specifically) an awareness of the editing process as a political act.

KEYWORDS:

• Artists
• refugees
• asylum seekers
• ethics of representation
• filmmaking
• autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Isobel Blomfield is from the University of New South Wales Sydney. She initiated and coordinates the legal section of Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney, organising regular visits to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre. She also works helping individuals with protection visa applications. As Co-creator of ‘Humans of Detention’, which seeks to re-humanise asylum seekers in Australia, Isobel documents the lived experiences of asylum seekers through first-hand narratives as a filmmaker. She is currently working on a collaborative film about a Somali woman who sought asylum in Australia. In 2017, Isobel won the NSW Humanitarian Award for her work in the refugee sector.

Dr Caroline Lenette is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales Sydney. She is a founding and Steering Committee member of the UNSW Forced Migration Research Network. Her research focuses on refugee and asylum seeker mental health and wellbeing, particualrly through the use of arts-based research methods, and on the ethics of using such methods in refugee research. Caroline is passionate about social justice focused research that opens up new pathways for people from refugee backgrounds to co-create new knowledge. She is interested in the socio-cultural meanings that people articulate about their own wellbeing via creative means like digital storytelling, photography, short films, and music. Her monograph on arts-based methods in refugee research will be published with Springer in 2019.

ORCID

Caroline Lenette http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2317-0438

Notes

1 The term ‘refugees’ is used here broadly to include both people whose refugee status has already been determined, and asylum seekers living in exile or in detention, whose claims for refugee status and protection are to be determined.

2 The Refugee Art Project started in 2010, collaborating with asylum seekers and refugees to produce exhibitions and publications. For more details on the project, see: http://therefugeeartproject.com/home/.

3 The festival is organised bi-annually since 2011 by Counterpoint Arts. For more details on this initiative, see http://counterpointsarts.org.uk/work/.