Illustrating Anthropology

This series of drawings was selected for the (online) exhibition ‘Illustrating Antrhopology’ supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute. This is an exhibition exploring human lives around the world through comics, drawings, and paintings of anthropological research.

The work presented here was made during fieldwork within reception facilitations for migrants and refugees in Greece over the past year. Contradictions and ambivalent experiences are at the core of daily life in this context, which together form a complex reality that can be considered a dynamic equilibrium as well as an untenable entropy. Intrigued by the daily trivialities I encountered, I made drawings as a way to think through and remember my observations.

The Illustrating Anthropology exhibition is part of the Being Human 2020 project, the UK’s only national festival and celebration of the humanities. It has been on display in Liverpool at the Open Eye Gallery and in Sheffield at Bloc Projects.

 “An Afghan family I had become close with invited me along on a picnic. When we found a spot, Miriam, the mother, walked to the water and directed herself towards Mecca. I had become used to seeing her cramped together with her family in their ISO-box in the camp, surrounded by fences, and was therefore struck by this sudden space and openness of the stretched out bay around her. I could see the mountains and train tracks in the distance that we crossed and followed earlier to get here. As she started to pray, she got on her knees and bowed her head to the ground. For a brief second, she became invisible as her body and dress blended in with the shape and color of the rocks. Moments later she reappeared and reached up into the crisp sky. In the repetitive movement of her prayer that followed, in which she appeared and disappeared over and over again, I saw a mirror of her ceaseless will to move forward and desire to be noticed, mixed with a profound hopelessness regarding her stagnated, neglected daily reality. Watching her from a distance, I realized how protracted displacement was in many ways drenched in such coinciding contradictions.”
- Kyra Sacks