Educational Program at the Refugees Welcome Center in Eleusis.
Artist, Dimitris Kannas and EMST Curator, Elisabeth Ioannides held a creative workshop for children from Afghanistan aged 6-12, at the Refugees Welcome Center in Eleusis.
During the workshop which aimed to contribute to the discovery and the familiarization with contemporary art and especially with the work of the South Korean artist Kimsooja (who participated at the exhibition “Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp” at EMST), the children painted their own cloths having as reference the colorful Korean beddings, the main material that Kimsooja uses for her own “bottari”, the Korean term for ‘bundle’. Tied colorful bundles of cloth, are used like ordinary containers for the safe-keeping or transportation of a family’s worldly goods. They are not meant for a family’s valuables or heirlooms, but for the most elementary household goods with will constitute the base for a start in a new place. They compose the story of a path, a departure, a journey, and an arrival. They remind us of the forced mobility of those who, because of political or ethnic persecution, illness, ecological disaster or financial turmoil, were able to save only themselves, in a bundle. Kimsooja’s bottaris become symbols of the restless, the stateless, the uprooted, and the uninvited, of the stranger or foreigner.
