This exhibition will challenge your misconceptions of the Calais 'Jungle'
- Text by Taylor McGraa
- Photography by Headline image by Paul Evans
As a humanitarian crisis wages, the Calais ‘jungle’ has come to symbolise the fiery debate that’s been sweeping through Europe. The camp itself is a vast expanse filled with thousands of people, all desperate enough to make often perilous journeys to try and make Europe their home. To some, Calais represents a failure in foreign policy, governments neglecting their responsibilities and an excuse to stir up fear and prejudice. To others, it’s just a place – for now – to call home.
Call me by my Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond is an exhibition seeking to break down the boundaries between these ranging perceptions. Using one space to show work created by campers within Calais, the volunteers who enter it, and other established artists, it brings all of its artists to the same level, and humanises them.
Picture by Chris Barrett
Running for a total of twenty days, the exhibition displays a range of art as diverse and unique as the individuals who made them. The series aims to pull our attention away from self-indulgent debates, and draw it back to those people struggling to survive within the camps themselves. Rather than limiting our perspective to one produced through the gaze of European reporters, this exhibition delves much deeper.
Too often, when we talk about the crisis facing migrants, refugees, humans, we forget about their humanity. We forget that they are real people, with real families, hopes and fears – each one with a unique experiences and outlook. In putting works produced by those inside of and outside the camp side by side, the exhibition allows our preconceptions to dissolve into the background.
One particularly powerful component of the exhibition is ‘Welcome to our Jungle’ – the product of a photography project run by volunteers. Here, those living in the camp were given cameras and photographic training, providing them with the resources to document the world around them. Many of the images were captured by children, giving the final images a sense of pure, unadulterated humanity.
Photo by A.K.A. Dream/Welcome to our Jungle
Nick Ellwood, a reportage illustrator, is another artist who features in the exhibition. After spending time working and drawing within the Calais camp. His sketches not only capture the portraits of those who he met, but hand-scrawlings of their names and stories too.
Image by Nick Ellwood
The exhibition also displays the work of ALPHA, a Mauritanian artist who was for a time living inside the camp, before being granted asylum in France. With many of his paintings produced using bright, bold colours and with images of hope, our presuppositions of migrants as figures of despair are diminished. Instead, we are left in awe of the simple beauty created in his work.
Painting by Alpha
With a sculptural installation designed specifically for the series itself, alongside a variety of other photographs and paintings from all corners of Calais, Call me by My Name offers the spectator a radically honest view of life in the camp. “Visitors will journey physically and emotionally through the space”, says Sue McAlpine, curator of the exhibition, “they will see refugees and migrants emerging from a nameless bunch of individuals, neither victims nor angels but each with their own story to tell”.
This exhibition forces us to reconsider how we react to, and talk about the complexities of the refugee crisis. It wants us to reflect on what has – or has not – been done about the crisis so far, and allows us to hone in on contemporary migration issues, placing an unapologetic and raw representation of Calais before our very eyes, challenging us to question what will happen next.
Call me by my Name: stories from Calais and Beyond exhibition from the Migration Museum Project is open at the Londonewcastle Project Space from 2 – 22 June, 2016.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
Free-spirited, otherworldly portraits of Mexico City’s queer youth
Birds — Pieter Henket’s new collaborative photobook creates a stage for CDMX’s LGBTQ+ community to express themselves without limitations, styling themselves with wild outfits that subvert gender and tradition.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The suave style and subtle codes of gay San Francisco in the ’70s
Seminal Works — Hal Fischer’s new photobook explores the photographer’s archive, in which he documented the street fashion and culture of the city post-Gay Liberation, and pre-AIDS pandemic.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The stripped, DIY experimentalism of SHOOT zine
Zine Scene — Conceived by photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the ’00s, the publication’s photos injected vulnerability into gay portraiture, and provided a window into the characters of the Brooklyn arts scene. A new photobook collates work made across its seven issues.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Joe Bloom’s View From a Bridge
More stories, more human — The artist and creator of the vertical video generation’s most loved storytelling platform explains the process behind creating the show, and the importance of bucking trends.
Written by: Isaac Muk
When David Wojnarowicz became Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud in New York — In 1978, the American artist and his friends donned masks to pay tribute to the French poet, who was born a century before him. Miss Rosen traces the differing yet parallel lives of the queer revolutionaries.
Written by: Miss Rosen
