By Siema Alam
2020

Visuals place a focus on what is current; an image transcends language barriers, allowing the whole world to watch. But what happens when all that is shown is only a fragment of the fuller story? What happens when people are the ones being watched? Do visuals then suffocate, or do they invoke awareness? What if that awareness makes people ignorant? What is the value of vision? In Safdar Ahmed’s graphic narrative Villawood, Ahmed uses drawings to depict his experience in an immigration detention center. Ahmed portrays the past and present of refugee stories, allowing him to spread awareness about hidden experiences. Ahmed is one of many creators who use visuals as a technique to spread awareness about refugees. Nilüfer Demir’s photo of Alan Kurdi also pushed the world to look at the humanitarian crisis. It is clear that these forms of visuals spread awareness about important issues, but there is a dichotomy in visual narrative. Visuals are a complex optic as they are used for narrative and freedom, but also utilized for surveillance and prejudice; the empathy towards visuals may be short-lived, but simultaneously, the optic can be used as long-term resistance to surveillance. In understanding and acknowledging these intricacies, how far can visuals go to aid the world’s awareness about humanitarian issues?

A visual narrative can be used for freedom. In Ahmed’s narrative, he discusses how invasive it can be when asking someone about their life’s biggest trauma. But Ahmed notices that refugees are “keen to speak about the here and now” (7), and also struggle with their mental health, so he sets up an art workshop as a way to make friends and learn about people. Often, refugees draw about their experiences from the past, without using words (Ahmed 11):

Ahmed includes a short caption for his drawings to provide context. But even without words, the audience can look at these drawings and see feelings like those of artist K Waran’s, and his experience of war. The image conveys a message about the choice of refugees: there is no choice. If refugees do not leave their country, they face either of the two experiences drawn above: imprisonment or death. Art is a way that visuals can be used for freedom—the freedom is the artist’s ability to draw whatever they choose to. By Ahmed providing a space for refugees to express themselves, he supplies them with a sense of agency through art.

Refugees are free to express themselves however they want to, in a place where they are under surveillance and have no real sense of freedom. The power of visuals is that it also allows viewers to “learn of others’ experiences and understanding of the world, which can add to one’s own understanding of the world or create opportunity for the understanding of others” (Cavnar-Lewandowski 25). Ahmed’s action of providing art made by refugees helps bridge the experiences of persecution to the outside world. Since these refugees cannot speak for themselves, Ahmed displays their works to give them a voice. This allows a broader audience to gain insight into a world which they would have otherwise never seen, allowing them to interpret drawn visuals.

While visuals can help bridge the distance between two worlds, the ability to interpret so freely can be used as a method for surveillance and unjust reasoning. Ahmed discusses the story of “Ahmad Ali Jafari, a Hazara refugee from Afghanistan” (14):

Ahmed mentions, “mistaking him for someone else, the department of immigration accused him [Ahmad] of having a criminal record abroad. He was brought from the community into Villawood for that reason” (15). While Ahmad’s drawing above depicts the frustration of being in a detention center, it does not truly tell the entire story. In this instance, the optic of the department of immigration “mistaking” Ahmad for someone else—as in them perceiving him as a criminal—costs Ahmad his freedom. In this sense, the openness of interpreting how refugees appear to officers is detrimental to innocent lives; visuals can be used for unfair justification of maltreatment and surveillance. The way Ahmad appears is the cause of his demise. So, later in the story, when Ahmad was complaining about strong pain in his chest, an officer entered the room (Ahmed 18):

The officer had the opportunity to believe Ahmad’s suffering, but instead, he watches Ahmad and chooses to laugh at his pain. As Ahmed mentions, the officer may have been using a stereotype—refugees trying to cheat the system (Ahmad trying to get his own room)—in his choice to respond to what he is currently seeing. The officer’s freedom in the ability to interpret and perceive, in this instance, caused the death of innocent Ahmad. The power of optic is that people can interpret their view however they want to, and in this freedom, some can choose to use stereotypes to be ignorant.

With the idea of negative surveillance by guards, there still is value to using an optic. Surveillance can be used to force the world to watch—this is exactly what happened when photos of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian refugee, was released:

The young boy’s body was washed onto the shore after a failed attempt to seek refuge. Why did this image move so many people? Journalist Blessy Augustine notes, “Kurdi’s isolated body lying face down and motionless on the beach made for a more dramatic image. Such images make us feel connected to what is happening elsewhere, without actually understanding what is happening. And so, on another level, by reducing a complex situation to a few accessible elements, the image helps us channel our horror and rage. It has the capacity to push us towards action” (3). This image is similar to K Waran’s image of the war, as it depicts the horrors and fears that refugees face, and the power figure of an officer in a simple manner. Ahmed and photographer Demir hope to use the optic to force people to see, empathize, and take action. For Demir, this photograph “brought much-needed attention to the Syrian war and the plight of its refugees, which resulted in short-term but important increases in individual aid and refugee policy changes in many countries” (Slovic 640), however, “this empathic response was short-lived.” While the optic can be used to stimulate social change, the length of that change tends to be short-lived. The double-edged sword of the optic is that it helps people stop for a moment to look and interpret. This means people could learn about refugee stories or choose ignorance; however, visuals occur in a quick moment, without much context. What the audience fails to see is the ongoing war and crisis and what they can do about it—they only see a fraction of the story. So, understanding the dichotomy of the power of optics towards narrative and surveillance, what is the true value of visuals? Perhaps Ahmed and Demir are opening windows to look into humanitarian crises using visuals, which is indeed remarkable and beneficial for refugee communities. Another factor that comes into play is the resistance to surveillance by using surveillance to expose injustice. Demir does this by sharing this politically charged image of Alan Kurdi, and the other refugees put late Ahmad’s photo on the walls of Villawood (Ahmed 24):

The refugees understand that the department of immigration is always watching, similar to how Demir knows that everyone will see the image of Alan Kurdi, so they put up Ahmad’s image and stated who killed him. Surveillance as an optic then shifts from a medium that is used to instill fear and suffocation, into a method that persistently exposes the truth, much like the use of optic of art to expose marginalized experiences.

Using visuals allows people from all backgrounds to understand complex social issues from a new perspective. Ahmed’s graphic narrative spreads awareness about refugees in Australia while giving them a platform to express their struggles. While the visual of art allows refugees to feel freedom, the ideas surrounding visuals are complex. The vast nature of visual and flexibility in perception can be used for any type of justification. For the refugee Ahmad, the way officers viewed him led to his unjust imprisonment and demise. Even when there are images that the world can see, people can choose to look at it for only an instant— their empathy is short-lived, like for Alan Kurdi; however, given all these risks, the vast nature of the optic can be molded into persistent resistance. While the optic remains as something complex, creators like Ahmed open a window into a world that people were previously blind to; it can be fearsome that the entire world is surveilling, but what is valuable to the spread of visuals is that very fact—the whole world is watching.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Safdar. Villawood. Notes from a detention center. Medium, 5 March 2015. December 2020. medium.com/shipping-news/villawood-9698183e114c#.dkkzlvlln.

Augustine, Blessy. The vulture in the frame. 8 January 2018. The Hindu Business Line. December 2020. www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/the-vulture-in-the-frame/article9901741.ece.

Cavnar-Lewandowski, Zoé and Gavin, Kelsey. “The Potential of Refugee Art to Inspire Empathy and Social Action.” LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations (2017): 299.

Demir, Nilüfer. “KiyiyaVuranInsanlik.” The Guardian, September 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian- boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees. December 2020.

Slovic, Paul. “Iconic photographs and the ebb and flow of empathic response to humanitarian disasters.” National Academy of Sciences (2016): 640-44.