A recent art exhibition provided visceral and thought-provoking insights into the plight of asylum seekers.

The composite exhibition, titled ‘Border Farce / Alien Citizen / Sovereign Murders’ by Safdar Ahmed was displayed at POP Gallery in Meanjin/Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.

Amongst the artworks were short films made by women from Nauru, who were evacuated for medical reasons, and former detainees from Villawood.

They explore subjects such as the provision of health services in centres and being a “displaced” person on the “occupied” lands of “displaced” peoples whose sovereignty was never ceded.

Zeinab Mir shared her settlement experience through the autobiographical animation Zeinab.

She affectingly conveys the pervasive effects of persistent racial prejudice. Reminiscent of art from her homeland, Iran, some vibrantly painted scenes are embellished with elaborate patterns.

One of the title artworks, Border Farce, is a collaboration between Safdar, cinematographer Alia Ardon, and “Manus Metal Man” Kazem Kazemi. The dual projections provide a textured interpretation of the latter’s life.

Juxtaposed is unsettling footage from his “prison camp” in Papua New Guinea, and a nourishing meal being prepared in a home in Australia. He and Safdar also appear on screen in full Metal regalia. In one scene Safdar sips from a teacup, the finery of the blue China contrasting the indelicacy with which his face paint was applied.

Kazem, incidentally, spent his first two years on the Australian mainland in hotel detention at Kangaroo Point, which is located in close proximity to the gallery.

Artist, writer and academic, Safdar said, “… human rights discourses and narratives of trauma are often put into a linear form.”

“Especially when refugees are put up to tell their stories to prove themselves as refugees.”

“In that kind of storytelling, what is often discarded, or not really considered, is the bodily experiences that people undergo, and the physical and emotional experience people go through,” said Safdar.

Safdar also expressed his desire to challenge the “binary discourse” of the “deserving” and “undeserving” refugee, “because no one is deserving or undeserving, human rights are human rights”.

The collaborators met via Instagram, during Kazem’s six-year incarceration on Manus Island and riffs he recorded in the laundry room feature on the Sovereign Murders record, which also forms a part of the exhibition.

The Iranian Metal guitarist from the Kurdish city of Ilam said, “The genre is actually illegal and forbidden in my country… [However], after I listened to heavy metal, I realised I have to become a heavy metal musician.” He counts Metallica amongst his inspirations for learning the guitar, because “they had the symbol I want, and [wore] face masks at the time.” He began his journey to Australia, to pursue this calling in 2013. Kazem and Safdar have been working together since 2018. Safdar’s “anti-racist Muslim death metal band” Hazeen, which poetically means “sorrow, sadness”, was formed in 2015.

The graduate of a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sydney founded The Refugee Art Project in 2011, after visiting Villawood with a set of sketchpads. Amongst his finest achievements to date is receiving a coveted Walkley Foundation award in 2015, for the alternative media publication GetUp! – The Shipping News. Safdar investigated “the psychological toll” of detention at the centre using his “distinctive graphic novel style”.

The final component referenced in the exhibition’s title, Alien Citizen, is a zine also created by Safdar. It illustrates a “white nationalism”, which is burgeoning on the back of the “scapegoating of racialized minorities”.

Griffith University Art Museum re-presented Border Farce / Alien Citizen / Sovereign Murders after its debut at documenta fifteen last year. Staged in Kassel Germany, the series is amongst the most prestigious and, at times, provocative perennial artistic events in the world.

The exhibition was held at the POP Gallery on the first floor of 381 Brunswick Street in the Fortitude Valley between the 1 – 12 February 2023.

By Pamela See