Refugees 2013 – 200 x 140cm, oil and acrylic on canvas
Refugees (2013) began with a figure, a body occupying a boarded-up doorway, shelter that is not shelter, presence that is barely legible as presence. Then I made a substitution: the figure became a flower. It is not a gentle substitution. It does not soften what it replaces. The flower stands in for the individual and for collective peoples simultaneously, which means it inherits the full weight of both, the singularity of a life and the anonymity of a crowd.
