We Refugees gathered photographic fragments of individual escape stories whose paths cross in Berlin. The title of the exhibition is based on the eponymous essay by Hannah Arendt in 1943. Therein refugees are referred to as the “vanguard of their peoples”.

Photographs that have been brought by refugees or have been taken during the escape, have been arranged by the artists Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles to a narrative. The real threat of the so-called floating combat zone, for some refugees also consisting in Germany, is reflected visually in the exhibition. In order to protect the refugees and their families from further persecution, the people who are still living were anonymized in the photographs and visual overlays were made . The faces we can look at because they are not anonymous, belong to dead people. The exhibition tells us of unspeakable experience. The family pictures and flight diary of phone images are evidence of loss and death, as well as of happiness and hope. It is an approach to the Brechtian refugee talks and his concept of ‘Inzwischenzeit’. Transferred it means ‘Inzwischenfotografie’: fragmentation, fragility and ironic commentary are giving impulses to oppositional thinking.

“We Refugees“ curated by Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles with: Ajmal, Ali, Amer, Daniel, Hassan, Husam, Mohamed, Muhammad, Noor, Omar, Rami and Rawia.

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