Art on The Run

Art on the Run is a project that creates dialogue and promote knowledge about life in a refugee camp – seen from artists point of view. What is the role of art when you as an artist have escaped from your home country? How does it help you to maintain your integrity and cultural self understanding? How can art and artists facilitate a proces where young people in a refugee camp tries to develop personal and cultural identity?

These are some of the questions that this website and the exhibitions around Denmark will try to answer.

On a research travel to Kenya in September 2009 we met several Sudanese refugee-artists in the art milieu in Nairobi. They told us about the refugee camp Kakuma in the northern part of Kenya and described how young people participated in art projects. This inspired us to focus our project on artists with an refugee background. How does a life in exile affect the development of art and how does art affect life in a refugee camp in general?

We visited Kakuma in March 2011 and met artists, mostly painters but also poets and we invited them to participate in the project. In the end we signed up with six artists. On this website you can see their paintings, read their stories and see photoes from the camp. Also you can find a calender showing the exhibition calender of Art on the Run. If you have a good idea about where the exhibition should be displayed, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We hope you like what you see.

Best regards from Torben Ulrik Nissen and Jesper Lorentz Bertelsen

Art on The Run is supported by Danish Center for Culture and Development and by PostArt - Art beyond Borders