Ismail Einashe, British-Somali writer and Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow, visited the University of Michigan Museum of Art Monday evening to discuss how art can humanize refugees and migrants as part of the Penny Stamps Speaker Series.
Einashe — who has spent a decade reporting on migration and refugee issues — began the lecture by describing the dehumanizing effects that media and politics can have on refugees. He said his book, “Strangers,” depicts art as a remedy to this issue.
“What I have seen time and time again is that people in the media coverage, in the political discussion, have seized at the humanity of people moving,” Einashe said. “My book ‘Strangers’ looks at migration through the lens of art, but it’s also arguing for us to use the power of art to rethink and humanize how we see migrants.”
In his lecture, Einashe showcased works of photography, painting, spoken word poetry and music depicting the migrant experience. Lexi Lake, event attendee and Art & Design senior, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily she admired how Einashe used many mediums of art during the lecture to frame his perspective on migration.
“I thought it was really interesting how he was pulling from a lot of other artists that he knows about and other people that he’d worked with,” Lake said. “I liked that he shared a lot of music as well and not only writing but other forms of art.”
Einashe also said that many of the refugees he has interacted with identify more with how they overcame their traumas rather than the traumatic experience itself.
“If you say to them, ‘What is it you want other people to know about your experience?’, people often don’t say the thing that most of us imagine, which is the violence they’ve ended up in,” Einashe said. “People always say the same thing in different ways — they say it’s how they overcame, how they endured, how they changed, how they moved on.”
A refugee himself, Einashe recounted his experience immigrating to London in the 1990s during the Somali Civil War. U-M alum Matthew Zimmerman, event attendee, said in an interview with The Daily even though Einashe experienced hardship, he admired how he has not let his struggles define him.
“You might not always realize what’s going on underneath the surface,” Zimmerman said. “At the center of everything, he still wants to see progress and live through joy, and I find that to be amazing.”
In an interview with The Daily, Einashe said art can act as both a means for connection and a humanizing medium for migrants.
“I think that politics and media had failed to accurately depict the reality and experiences of people on the move, whether migrants or refugees,” Einashe said. “I think art has a unique ability to be able to connect us to the individual humanity — the personal choice of migrants — which are often buried under dehumanizing political rhetoric.”
Regardless of how refugees are portrayed in media and politics, Einashe said refugees experience life no different than anyone else.
“I think in the end, we have to remember that people that are moving are just like us,” Einahse said. “They love, they fight, they gossip, they struggle. They are just as human as we are.”
Daily Staff Reporter Micayla Horwitz can be reached at hmicayla@umich.edu.
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