Last month the six front columns of Berlin’s historic Konzerthaus were decked out with fourteen thousand bright orange life jackets—an installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, titled Safe Passage. A tribute to those who have risked their lives on the Mediterranean Sea to escape persecution in the Middle East and North Africa, the work was made to coincide with Cinema for Peace’s annual award gala on February 15, part of the Berlin International Film Festival. The money raised at this year’s gala was used to purchase five thousand rescue blankets and one thousand emergency baby kits (for births that have taken place at sea), which the Cinema for Peace Foundation delivered this past week to the Greek island of Lesbos, the most popular port of entry for people fleeing to Europe through Turkey.
Weiwei visited Lesbos in December to see for himself the human faces of the current refugee crisis. He shared on Instagram photos and videos he took inside a refugee camp, to show the world what’s going on in Lesbos, and has opened an additional studio there.
One thing that visually struck Weiwei were the giant mounds of life jackets heaped up on the beaches. Refugees shed them as soon as they disembark their boats, setting foot, at last, on land, and ready to start their new lives. Seeing in them a poignant symbol of the crisis, he asked the mayor of the island if he could take a small portion—and yes, fourteen thousand is only a small portion—with him to Europe to use for an art installation. His request was granted. Wrapped around the grand facade of Berlin’s nineteenth-century concert house, they bear witness to the scale of the crisis and even allude to its human cost: last year, a reported 3,770-plus refugees died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean, and the death toll for this year has already exceeded 400. Some of these deaths were due to defective life jackets sold to migrants by a Turkish company looking to cut down on production costs.
While some have questioned the efficacy of staging such a large awareness raiser in Germany, a country that has taken in more refugees than any other European Union member state, others point out that several antirefugee organizations have emerged there, such as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA), which calls on the German government to enact stricter asylum laws. Not all the German people are proud of the measures its country has taken to invite in Syrians, Afghans, and other huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Instead they fear the repercussions. Weiwei’s Safe Passage protests against that fear-based mentality that denies and excludes.
Weiwei has not been the first person to recycle used life jackets into art. Last December British artist Arabella Dorman incorporated three life jackets into her installation Flight in St. James’s Church in Piccadilly, London, which has them tumbling out of a capsized dinghy hanging from the ceiling. She also filled the Christmas crèche at the front of the church with a few dozen more: they cushion the ground where the sculpted figures kneel in adoration of the newborn Christ child. Continue reading “Discarded life jackets used by artists to raise awareness of refugee crisis”
Art & Theology 