Artists on the move

"We are artists, survivors, not just victims on the move"

View in gallery

Art and exile: a different perspective.

The Memorial Museum of Exile (MUME)
between the 8th of february 2020 and the 14th of June 2020
organized an exposition called “Art i exili”, “Art and exile”.

In this exposition were exposed several pieces of art
made by several artists that had to leave Spain
during the Republican exile.

All these artists met in Mexico, where they were welcomed
thanks to asylum policies of the Mexican governments between 1937 and 1945
and lived their respective exiles after the Spanish War.

Following the line on “Art i exile” this exposition “Artists on the move”
will show you some of the artistic pieces created by
spanish artists who experienced exile in the past ,
and will introduce you to modern artists,
seeking for exile,
in our days .

The idea is to swift the focus as demanted in several Focus groups with refugees and
to look at migrants not just as victims and oppressed
but also as survivors and artists

Item 1 of 3

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/
Item 2 of 3

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/
Item 3 of 3

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/

Two painters but different exiles

Roser Bru
is a painter born in Barcelona in 1923.
The following year her family went into exile in Paris,
as a result of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.
Four years later, they returned to their hometown.
After the Spanish Civil War, in 1939, she moved back to France,
where she embarked for Chile where she lived her exile
She arrived in Valparaíso on 3 September of that year.

In her paintings Roser Bru “speaks” about exile, politics, and women

Laila Ajjawi
is a graffiti artist born and raised
in a Palestinian refugee camp outside of Irbid, Jordan.

Her work focuses on visibility for women living in the Middle East,
particularly refugees facing discrimination and limited
resources in their countries of residence.

Two different women ,
two different exiles,
but the same interests
in potraying women lives
and exile.

Roser Bru

Laila Ajjawi refugee painter

Josep Bartoli, an illustrator in a concentration camp

Josep Bartoli was a painter, a designer and artist born
in Barcelona in 1910 in a family that loved music and art.

In February 1939, near the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939),
he crossed the French border. Over two years, he would pass through seven concentration camps,
the latest was Bram, from which he escaped.
He was arrested by the Gestapo, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, but on the way
he jumped the train and fled, and after a long journey, he arrived in Mexico.

He uses drawings to tell his story about exile, his experiences in concentration camps.

Item 1 of 4

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/
Item 2 of 4

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/
Item 3 of 4

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/
Item 4 of 4

https://www.museuexili.cat/en/

Art to connect

“My great grandfather came to this country and started a garbage business.
One hundred years and four generations later,
it is important to remember that migration is a human right.”

Drawings from camps

Josep Bartoli drew about his life in a concentration camp in France around 1939.
Youseef drew about his life in a refugee camp in Greece around 2019.
80 years passed, time flew, what about freeedom?

Josep Bartoli drawing

Youssef drawing of a refugee camp in Greece

A poet voice during ourdays exile

2021

Warsan Shire was born on 1 August 1988
in Kenya to Somali parents.
She migrated with her family to the United Kingdom
at the age of one and during her adolescence she started
her journey into poetry.

Her words “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”,
from the poem “Conversations about Home (at a deportation centre)”,
have been called “a rallying call for refugees and their advocates”

”
No one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
No one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
You have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here “

Poem by Warsan Shire

A poet voice during the republican exile

2021

Carmen Castellote was born in Bilbao in 1932.
In 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War,
her parents embarked her on one of the evacuation campaigns
for children organized by the Second Spanish Republic.

She was sent to Leningrad, in the Soviet Union,
where a lot of Spanish children
were living in the “Children’s Houses”.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1941,
she was evacuated in Siberia.

In 1958 she traveled to Mexico to meet again with her father,
who had gone into exile there after the civil war,
establishing his permanent residence there.

At the age of 40 she puplished her first book of poems.
A container of thoughts about war, love and exile

Here you can have a bite of it in her poem
“The war and I”, “La guerra y yo”

“Caminos, kilómetros de tiempo,
nada puede apartarme de la guerra,
de sus muertos escondidos en mi infancia.

Y la vida nada sabe de este hoyo,
abierto aquí, en mi corazón.
Beben tierra los ríos como antes,
las estrellas se persiguen en el mar,
el monte se hace altar para la nieve
y el sol deja que la sombra juegue contra el árbol.

Todavía los niños juegan a la guerra
y la flor es asombro y soledad.

Es tarde y quiero dormir,
pero la noche está llena de muertos.

Iza el miedo sus alas nocturnas.

¿Acaso es la guerra?
Quiero ser manos, muchas manos,
para matar la obscuridad.

Un rocío de luz entra en mi mañana.

Los árboles se embriagan de aurora,
los hombres cruzan el pasto húmedo de la noche,
madrugan los caminos, bosteza la calle.

Una mujer quiere barrer el nuevo día
con su vieja escoba,
y en la orilla de un colegio dos niños luchan
mientras los otros ríen.

Ya nadie habla de la guerra.

¿Qué hago con los muertos?”

Carmen Castellote, a poet in exile in 1939