Abdulazez Dukhan
from Homs, Syria

„My name is Abdulazez Dukhan, I am 19 years old from Syria, I left my country two years ago. I have lived 5 months in a Greek refugee camp during 2016 and there I started my trip with photography, I became documentarian and I discovered that I am in love with photography. I used to live in Homs city, Syria, with my family and friends (...). Telling the truth was the first right we lost in the war, so I began teaching myself photography during our escape. On the 26th of February 2016, I arrived in Greece with my family. The border was shut 12 days later, and I officially became a refugee resident in a tent camp. More than one year has passed now and being in different refugee camps, Through Refugee Eyes was created to pass their stories on to you. Looking through a lens, we are deeply hoping you will look at reality with us. Our hopes, our smiles, our suffering, our lives, it is all here, told as truthfully as possible. We need you here with us – eyes wide open.“

Facebook:https://goo.gl/adN83L

Kawa Haji Majid
from Al Hasaka, Syria

Kawa studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Al Hasaka and has been working in the field of decoration and painting. He left Syria in 2013, went to Iraq, then to Turkey and stranded in Greece in 2016. His art documents his flight and takes the viewer on a journey from Turkish prisons, on a rubber boat crossing the Aegean Sea, into Greek military camps. Kawa and his family have recently been relocated to Spain.

The Coldest Summer – Three Refugees’ Stories
Autobiographical Stories as a Comic
Dimitra Adamopoulou, Thanasis Petrou, Giorgos Tragakis, Electra Alexandropoulou, Mihalis Panayiotakis, Kostis Tsitselikis
Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

A working mother, a working father and two children who are forced to struggle to survive, to leave their homeland because it has become too dangerous, to abandon the life they knew as it had become unbearable, and leave their families behind in the pursuit of a life where they can think beyond the next day or month and in which they will be able plan a future in peace: to work, study and live among us with equal access to democracy, social rights and culture.
The stories are based on the autobiographical narratives of refugees in Athens and in Berlin. They are stories heard by chance. They were turned into comics in order to avoid drama but at the same time to retain narrative detail. The protagonists of the stories are people who could have been members of our family, our friends or our neighbours. They are, beyond doubt, people who, some day, will be recognised as fellow human beings in our societies and in our spaces. Let us welcome them.

Website: http://www.rosalux.eu/

Live Painting Workshop DIPTYCHON ‘Family Portrait’
By Valentina Sartori

FAMILYPORTRAITS is a performative and collective painting project originated and designed by the artist Valentina Sartori. In jointly composing the own portrait through speedy drawings, topics or approaches can be visualised and translated into images.

On both days of the conference, a workshop will be offered, followed by an exhibition, inviting participants to be drawn in profile view, to portray a situation ‘eye-to-eye’.

Based on the illustration of love, the difference in age, the social and economic position and power relations, the project ‘DIPTYCHON’ (from ancient Greek ‘two-fold’) explores, which relationships nowadays can be visualized, between people who share experiences without knowing each other. What has been seen through the eyes of the helper? Which shared visions of the future do they want to see?

The shared working experience allows access independent of language to different behaviours and ideas, and to acceptance. FAMILYPORTRAITS is a confrontation of the central European view with the view of the people arriving from conflict zones.

Realised paintings can be purchased for a donation. The exhibition will include pieces from the series ‘RE-BILD Family portrait from wandering worlds’.

Website:   http://www.valentina-sartori.com/