“I have heard it said that we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere.” (Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini).
They desperately fled the danger and horror of their homes, now deserted. They left with longing and loss for those who had to stay behind, for the promised land, not their own, far away and unwelcoming. The journey dangerous and frightening, in the rubber boats into which they were crammed, men, women and their children, whilst the waves mounted and their flimsy transport to freedom and safety, disintegrated beneath them. One can die in many ways. They are asylum seekers.
In my work I have tried to represent the danger, despair, and lingering hope in the faces, caricatures of humanity.
I have chosen a combination of yacht sails with the rubber dinghies. At once symbols of lingering hope and creeping fear and despair. The hope remains in the sails as a propulsive force that with the wind, which exists, but cannot be seen.
They risk everything for a chance of freedom. How many boats are never seen. How many people are never fished from the sea.
– Margaret Gold
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