‘They’ Exhibition Highlights Refugees’ Plight in Zagreb

The streets of the Croatian capital Zagreb on Monday are to host a photographic exhibition of four refugees currently living in Croatia called "Oni/They."

At each individual point, four portraits of one migrant by different photographers will be exhibited. The project is run under the auspices of UNHCR Croatia in collaboration with the Jesuit Refugee Service.

Croatian artists Ana Opalic, Mare Milin, Stanko Herceg and Ivan Posavec showed their own visions of the four people from the Middle East and their traumatic stories.

The exhibition forms part of the 13th annual Festival of Tolerance, which opens in Zagreb on Monday and runs until April 21, and is aimed at "fostering critical thinking and the creation of a more tolerant society".

Hrvoje Puksec, the festival's coordinator and the head of its educational programme, told BIRN that the exhibition aims to foster greater sensitivity to refugee issues.

"Each of us in the eyes of another is another person … Four photographers photographing four refugees - four photographs of the same person," Puksec said.

The subjects of the exhibition are a ten-year-old boy from Iran who is attending elementary school in Zagreb; an architect from Syria who works in Zagreb as a carer; an Iraqi woman who is waiting for her daughter and grandchildren to be granted asylum and 30-year-old Syrian with degree in agriculture who is currently training to be a chef and also working for the Jesuit Refugee Service as an unofficial translator.

"These are all stories about people who have to rearrange a new life in a new environment, in which they do not know much and whose language is really strange to them," Puksec said.

The photographic exhibition "Oni/They." in Zagreb centre. Photo: Festival of...