Tania Kaczynski - Who Am I?

This book is dedicated to my dear parents,
Marian and William Kaczynski,
who both passed away while I was writing it.
I know you can see from afar.
Who Am I? is for you both and for all refugees, past, present and future.

Front Cover: Who Am I? by Paul

Back Cover: The Journey Continues by Wallid (p.78)

Frontispiece: Puppet King by Paul

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St Georges Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Tania Kaczynski, 2020

The right of Tania Kaczynski to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9552 8

Design by Katie Beard

Printed in Turkey by IMAK

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Crowned Creature by Paul

Here is a book like no other.

It tells real stories about real people, people who happen to be asylum seekers and refugees. Though we are bombarded with words about immigration, we seldom hear from the human beings at the heart of it, or see how the experience appears through their individual eyes.

Where there is war there will always be people seeking asylum. And there is always war. We are in the midst of the most urgent humanitarian crisis since the Second World War; there are currently over 70 million displaced people in the world, which means there are 70 million people without citizenship of anywhere.

These displaced people are people just like us.

One day, we might be asylum seekers too.

Who Am I? tells the story of a tiny art project that survived against the odds. It describes the creation of the New Art Studio and how two art therapists, Jon Martyn and I, joined forces with an international crew of the dispossessed to form an art collective unlike any other.

London Scene by Benjamin Croft

The lives of asylum seekers and refugees remain insecure even after they have lived in the UK for many years. In order to protect the individuals I describe in this book, all names and countries of origin have been changed or omitted.

I can, however, tell you that the studio is multicultural, and that we have members from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine and many more. Although our artists have their own distinctive style, each individual image exists thanks to the existence of the whole. The energy and spirit of the studio gives birth to the paintings. It is a very collective unconscious. In the same way it takes a village to raise a child, so it takes a studio to raise an artist.

Free at Last by Reyhana

Still Beating by Shaka

Strong bonds form when people make art together. Intimacy grows swiftly and without effort. And when the people making art are asylum seekers the effect intensifies, as astonishing, unfinished stories unfold on canvas and paper like tales from One Thousand and One Nights.

We use the phrase asylum seekers lightly. It rolls off the tongue without thought. We hear it so often that we become immune to the reality of being an asylum seeker unless we are lucky, like me, and get to make art and develop friendships with those who have experienced it. Each of them is an individual with stories to shame the media headlines the kind we assume happen only in movies and Boys Own adventures full of escape, near-starvation, unjust imprisonment and tyrannical rulers who act with impunity. Stories that make civilian life in the free world seem childlike and unchallenged.

Going Away by Paul

Snowy Mountains by Akram

In the beginning, the lives of asylum seekers were just like ours. Before civil war broke out, before despots took control, their lives were full of comfy normality: school, work, marriages, emotional fall-outs and reconciliations before they began to run. Caught in the crossfire, they fled for their lives and are now adrift, globally homeless in an indifferent world.

Buried in the Escher-like labyrinth of the Islington Arts Factory (an arts community centre reminiscent of the heydays of the 1970s) with no natural light, a leaking roof, cold in winter and hot in summer, existing on donated materials, the New Art Studio is a lifeline for people who have nothing: no family, no money, no connections.

Where do we go when we make art? To our unconscious, to our underworld, to places that frighten and compel us. To our dreams and to our nightmares. At the New Art Studio we travel that journey together.

Id like to introduce you to the people behind the headlines and the statistics. To a group of artists, a group of friends. Let me show you around.

Universal Exile by Paul

Determined by Reyhana