A Room Between the Rooms
Mellom rommene
A project by Lise Linnert & Gelawesh Waledkhani in collaboration with undocumented migrants in Norway and the organization Humans in Limbo.
Doing something with our hands also does something to our minds, we talk differently, we listen better, and we get closer to each other.
— Lise Linnert
Concept
A Room Between the Rooms is a long-term art project to highlight the lives, experiences and voices of undocumented migrants, living in hiding in Norway.
In May 2020, a small group of men and women are gathered around a table in Oslo. Everyone is concentrating on the paper in front of them. Today's assignment is entitled: Memories of a room. The pencil and colors draw out memories. Some drawings look like overview maps, others have a small detail from a room in focus, each carries a story. We share them with each other. Some write notes into the drawing.
What Nasim, Hiwot, Mezeret, Sarah and Koroush have in common is that they do not really exist, they are so-called paperless. People that are unwanted in our country. They have hardly any rights and few opportunities. Each day is a challenge, and the future highly uncertain. Since 2014, the situation for refugees has progressively worsened. Millions are internally displaced, others are fleeing across borders and nearly ten million people are stateless, according to the UN.
Read more about the project here: www.roombetween.com
There is a light in everything that burns. A flame that burns in each of us, from before we are born, and which is kept alive by the people around us. The fuel is the belief in the future and the feeling of being wanted, the feeling of belonging. For every defeat and every rejection, the flame flickers, gets weaker and weaker until there is only a glow left.
— From the book Those Who Don’t Exist by Simon Stranger
Cruelty has a Human Heart
When taking the project Cruelty has a Human Heart on a dialogue tour I exhibited it at an asylum reception center and spent three weeks arranging drawing workshops there. The experience made me want to create a new project finding ways to share stories and diminish distance.