Imagine: voices from Lebanon

Refugee Week 2020

In the era of Covid-19, the call to imagine feels more important than ever.

‘To imagine’ means to picture something you can’t currently see. To step beyond the current moment, and perceive something different. Rather than being a flight away from reality, imagination is sometimes the best response to it – the only way to get us somewhere new.

Yet, how is imagination different when you are a refugee? How is it different when you are a refugee living through both displacement and a pandemic? These are the kinds of inquiries we set out to explore with our refugee partners in the field.

More specifically, we asked a few community members from Burj el Barajneh camp in Beirut Lebanon and Bar Elias in the Zahlé District to reflect on the following questions:

What does imagination mean to you? Do you imagine? AND

What is your personal imagination of the future? What is (a collective) community imagination for you? What is collective human (global) imagination for you?

Imagine: Voices from Lebanon is a virtual showcase of their submissions.

Enter

A special thank you to all our collaborators for engaging so deeply and generously with the theme.

Artists:

Abou Ahmad, Rayan Sokkar, Mahmoud Mileji, Asmaa Al-Hajj Khalil, Ahmad Moussa, Doha, Mariam, Asinat, Raheel and Suha.

Project team:

Samar Maqusi , Kae Ohene-Yeboah, Mariam Daher (RELIEF Centre) and Joana Dabaj (CatalyticAction)

Additional Illustrations: @calligraphy_portrait

Exhibition Consultant: @_jcook

Photo by Nathan McBride on Unsplash