The Hull-based, Sudanese collective Arafa and the Dirars brings together Arafa Hassan Gouda and four of her children: Mayas, Ethar, Waieel and Akram Dirar. Working predominantly across painting, drawing and installation, their practices weave together in a variety of ways, enabling ideas and work to be shaped organically by input from different members as well as each having distinct artistic voices.
Arafa and Mayas were in residency at Edinburgh Printmakers for a full month. Ethar, Waieel and Akram worked with them initially remotely, joining them in the studio for the last ten days. The focus of their work in Edinburgh has been screen-printing, a process that retains the rich use of colour and emotional immediacy that we see in their paintings, combined with additional imagery made in block printing.
One of their first test prints is Mayas Dirar's The water day, based on a scene drawn by the artist from memory which depicts water being delivered to the refugee camp in Egypt where she lived with her family before being resettled to the UK. This striking work is printed in two colours - blue and red - highlighting the intensity of what it meant to be waiting for an essential natural resource at the camp, amidst the longer and much more uncertain reality of waiting to be granted resettlement.
Arafa and the Dirars have also developed a large, printed textile artwork, collectively denouncing the plight of those whose lives continue to be torn apart by war. The piece shows a screen-printed background of a village in Libya seconds after an explosion has occurred, the sky covered in yellow and orange flames. Over this surface, the artists have applied small print blocks by hand, each depicting a different figure witnessing the blast, their bodies distorted by horror and grief. One of them is a child, whose face resembles simultaneously a wave caused by bomb and a rose, evoking both life's fragility under war and the artists' demand for a peaceful future.
At the end of their residency Arafa and the Dirars presented the storytelling event رحلة [rihla] Journey, programmed as part of Refugee Week 2022. Loosely inspired by the Scottish ceilidh tradition, this evening gathering saw them sharing their own migration stories and reflecting on how art has been present throughout their journey, both as a tool that has forged their resilience and as a practice that has provided them with their creative identity.
Residency dates: 7th June - 1st July 2022
Arafa and the Dirars @ Lee Karen Stow, 2022
Arafa and the Dirars are an artists' collective based in Hull. Born in West Sudan the Dirars family was resettled as refugees to the UK in 2015 through the UN Gateway Protection Programme. Having fled the war in Libya and during four years in a refugee camp in Egypt, they used the time waiting for a decision on their future to develop their skills in drawing, painting, and poetry. Today they use their art to reflect on their journey, share their story with others, and draw attention to the ongoing plight of millions of people fleeing war and persecution.
Arafa and the Dirars' residency has been kindly sponsored by by Staycity.
