Who Am I?

The story of a London art studio for asylum seekers and refugees

Tania Kaczynski

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780750993012
• eBook ISBN: 9780750995528
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

When everything is lost, imagination is the only place of true freedom. The New Art Studio, co-founded in 2014 by art psychotherapist Tania Kaczynksi, is a unique space in London set up as a lifeline for refugees and asylum seekers so they can experience art therapy in a relaxed, informal atmosphere. Who Am I? is a poignant look at the state of the dispossessed, and at how creating art can provide a last bastion of hope for those who have lost everything. Alongside the unique and touching artwork of the studio's members are their true stories of bravery, loss and redemption.

Still Beating by Shaka

1

WELCOME TO THE NEW ART STUDIO

Making art with the dispossessed

Strong bonds form when people make art together. Intimacy grows swiftly and without effort. And when the people making art are asylum seekers the effect intensifies, as astonishing, unfinished stories unfold on canvas and paper like tales from One Thousand and One Nights.

We use the phrase ‘asylum seekers’ lightly. It rolls off the tongue without thought. We hear it so often that we become immune to the reality of being an asylum seeker unless we are lucky, like me, and get to make art and develop friendships with those who have experienced it. Each of them is an individual with stories to shame the media headlines – the kind we assume happen only in movies and Boys’ Own adventures full of escape, near-starvation, unjust imprisonment and tyrannical rulers who act with impunity. Stories that make civilian life in the free world seem childlike and unchallenged.

Going Away by Paul

Snowy Mountains by Akram

In the beginning, the lives of asylum seekers were just like ours. Before civil war broke out, before despots took control, their lives were full of comfy normality: school, work, marriages, emotional fall-outs and reconciliations … before they began to run. Caught in the crossfire, they fled for their lives and are now adrift, globally homeless in an indifferent world.

Buried in the Escher-like labyrinth of the Islington Arts Factory (an arts community centre reminiscent of the heydays of the 1970s) with no natural light, a leaking roof, cold in winter and hot in summer, existing on donated materials, the New Art Studio is a lifeline for people who have nothing: no family, no money, no connections.

Where do we go when we make art? To our unconscious, to our underworld, to places that frighten and compel us. To our dreams and to our nightmares. At the New Art Studio we travel that journey together.

I’d like to introduce you to the people behind the headlines and the statistics. To a group of artists, a group of friends. Let me show you around.

Universal Exile by Paul

Determined by Reyhana

2

PARK LIFE

The New Art Studio as a refugee

Before the New Art Studio I ran a similar project for six years as part of a large charity. It was here that I met Jon Martyn, a fellow art therapist. It was a thriving project. The clients and I bonded way beyond the boundaries of formal psychotherapy – we bonded as artists and we bonded as people. It was there that Jon and I began thinking and planning what was to become the New Art Studio.

That feeling of connection and camaraderie is vital for refugees and asylum seekers who have had to leave their sense of belonging behind. The studio had an atmosphere of community akin to extended family and it became as important to me as it was for the members who attended. So having to explain that it was closing for reasons beyond my control was devastating. I felt the air being sucked from the room when I shared the news, and watched as everyone readjusted to the new normal as they had so many times before.

The easy thing would have been to find another job, and say goodbye and good luck to the group. But I didn’t – I realised I loved that studio and all who sailed in her.

I loved the people who arrived shaken and frail and came back to life in the slow, silent aura that blanketed the studio with love and hope. I loved the use of mixed-up English to describe the paintings, art materials and feelings that accompanied the images. And I loved that all this happened inside the warm glow of art-making.

I had made art with many different ‘clients’ in the past, but this group held my attention in an otherworldly way. I transcended something with them, crossed borders from their countries to here. So when we were made homeless, refugeed in a cruel mirroring of their own stories, I heard myself promising that, in some form or other, we would continue.

And then we hatched a crazy plan. Until we could find a new space, we would meet once a week in the park. We would recreate the studio we had shared, simply without the walls and ceiling. In a way, this shaky ground was familiar territory. The studio members were – and still are – used to living in hope and in limbo, from one day to the next. Now our little studio was thrown into the same rolling sea. We lived on our wits and wings and prayers.

And art, always the art.

Slowly but surely, rough-and-ready Finsbury Park itself became a facilitator. We would lay out our art material and our food on a blanket, and settle down to our usual Thursday. The group would sit and chat, drawing trees and skies, birds and bicycles. One of the members told stories of sleeping here for two weeks when she had first arrived in the United Kingdom ten years earlier. Lela, one of the longest-standing members of the group, explained which berries you could eat from the trees, trees I had walked past a thousand times before and now saw in a completely new light. Lela’s knowledge of foraging came from her years as a freedom fighter, when she became skilled at survival techniques.

The fact that the group was willing to take a chance on me – and each other – without the physical and emotional security of an institution was the beginning of a series of small miracles. Trust issues are a major part of the asylum psyche, so for these people to meet in the park without a receptionist, caretaker, key worker or any other visible trappings of an established charity was in itself a celebration of our vision.

The talk would always return to the future of the studio. ‘New studio coming?’ I would reassure everyone that ‘Yes, there is a new studio coming …’

Shelter by Lela

Edmonton by Anon.

This limbo time made for a very dreamy atmosphere, playful and silly, life lived in the moment. Revelling in that sublime, in-between space where all bets are off, we were babes in the woods, fairies making homes from grass and bark. The girls would go off for strolls, picking herbs and flowers, sharing their riches back at our makeshift HQ. One made a tiny installation of mythical creatures born of twigs and leaves and petals and ferns. Others made rubbings from the bark of trees, enjoying this simple sensory experience, and all the while our one child played hide and seek in the bushy undergrowth. With few paints and papers, nature is and always has been art. Necessity truly was the mother of our creativity.

At the refugee charity we had the luxury of walls where we could display our latest artwork, and spend time looking and reflecting on the day’s activity together. In the park, the girl who made the mythical creatures set up her miniature models along a log, so when we had our traditional talking time they were included in our discussion.

The experience of looking at art is very different from that of making it – especially if you are the actual creator. Looking gives time for reflection and separate thought. Unplanned and unexpected conversations would emerge. We had created a sanctuary under the shadows of the summer trees, the birds chirping around us. In many ways our time in the park was idyllic.

During those magical but fraught months, Jon and I pressed on with our quest to find studio space and source funds for rent and basic running costs. We visited community halls, warehouses and cafes – we went anywhere and spoke to anyone who might take this motley crew of dispossessed troubadours. Between us we attempted to will the four walls and a roof into existence.

But as the summer breeze and London’s light mood faded, the seriousness of our dilemma came into sharp autumnal relief and, after months of asking ‘New studio coming?’, the girls began to mock-shiver...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Making Art with the Displaced
• Part One: An Idea
• Part Two: Studio Stories
• Part Three: No Way Out But Through
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Further Reading