Refugee Drawings Reveal Past Traumas and Future Hopes

A team behind the Paris-based Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow, YTT, research and educational project has collaborated with thousands of refugees in over 30 camps and squats across Europe and North Africa, collecting their voices.

'Today' by a 13-year-old Iraqi-Kurd boy currently living in Kara Tepe Refugee Camp, Lesbos Island, Greece. Photo: courtesy of YTT

The YTT team aims to "develop educational and communication tools to facilitate global refugee and immigrant integration".

'Yesterday' by an 18-year-old Syrian boy currently living in Kara Tepe Refugee Camp, Lesbos Island, Greece. Photo: courtesy of YTT

Since 2016, when it was launched by a contemporary artist and activist Bryan McCormack, the team has collaborated with thousands of people from more than 50 nationalities, aged three to 70 in over 30 camps and squats across Europe and North Africa.

'Yesterday' by a 28-year-old Syrian woman currently living in Estia Refugee Shelter, Athens, Greece. Photo: courtesy of YTT

"Each refugee/immigrant receives three sheets of paper and coloured pens and is invited to draw three sketches: one of their life before: Yesterday. One of their current life: Today. And one of their life imagined in the future: Tomorrow," the YTT team explained BIRN.

'Yesterday' by a 9-year-old Iraqi girl, currently living in Belgrade, Serbia. Photo: courtesy of YTT

The resulting images are, it added, vivid, powerful and transmit "quite distinctly the individual voice, as people living and existing in extreme conditions produce drawings that are intense, brutal but exceptionally coherent and clear".

'Today' by a 9-year-old Iraqi girl, currently living in Belgrade, Serbia. Photo: courtesy of YTT

"These drawings define the YTT visual language, a raw, emotional and...

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