Threads of Refuge

Curated by Thy Phu & Saaz Taher
Portraits by Anthony Gebrehiwot

Forced displacement transforms lives, intertwining visible and unseen strands of change into new narratives. Threads of Refuge explores these transformations, through intimate portraits by photographer Anthony Gebrehiwot, of refugees Shamso Elmi, Sahra Gelle, Mariam Manai, and Ezat Mossallanejad, each accompanied by their personal stories. These images invite viewers to reflect on the taut balance between honouring loss and embracing renewal, as individuals rebuild their lives in unfamiliar spaces, while clasping the fraying strands of memory, culture, and identity. Each portrait unveils the layered complexity of refugee experiences, where the anguish of displacement coexists with unwavering spiritual faith, aspiration for reinvention, and the hope of preserving ties to community. Threads of Refuge cultivates a space for reflection, encouraging audiences to engage with the textured realities of displacement. The exhibition shows how, even amid upheaval, refugees hold fast to heritage and faith,  weaving intricate patterns of belonging that sustain them in ever-shifting landscapes.

Threads of Refuge is one of the outcomes of Refugee States, a SSHRC-funded research-creation project that preserves oral histories and creates digital stories. By centering the voices and perspectives of refugees and migrants, the project challenges dominant narratives about forced migration in antiracist and queer- and trans-affirming ways. Since 2022, in collaboration with peer researchers, community partners, and artists across Toronto and Montreal, the project has supported the creation of a living archive of oral histories, digital stories, and creative interventions by and for refugee communities. Refugee States is co-directed by Edward Ou Jin Lee (Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Universite de Montreal) and Thy Phu (Distinguished Professor of Race, Diaspora, and Visual Justice at the University of Toronto Scarborough).

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Thy Phu is a Distinguished Professor of Race, Diaspora, and Visual Justice at the University of Toronto. Her research and curatorial work explore the intersections of photography, memory, and social justice. She is the author of Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam (Duke University Press, 2022), which provides a new visual history of the war in Vietnam by centring the perspectives of Vietnamese photographers. Her scholarship has been widely published in leading journals, and she has co-edited influential, including Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada  and Cold War Camera. As a curator, she has contributed to exhibitions that bring overlooked photographic histories to broader audiences, including The Family Camera, Queering Family Photography, and the most recently, Visual Kinship, collaborative projects on personal photography, race, and migration. Her work invites audiences to reconsider how images construct histories, identities, and solidarities in the wake of fractured archives and in an era of digital transformation and global migration.

Saaz Taher recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Public Communication at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her research lies at the intersection of critical migration and refugee studies, theories of epistemic justice and injustice, critical race theory, feminist epistemologies of the Global South, and feminist critical Muslim studies. She contributes to Refugee States, a collaborative, community-based, and research-creation project funded by a SSHRC Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative grant.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Anthony Gebrehiwot is an award-winning artist and community leader whose creative lens re-visions photography as an ongoing dialogue of social change between subject and society. Gebrehiwot seeks to communicate without language in an intimate and vulnerable way: through his art, he portrays the vocabulary of race, masculinity, history, perception, and vulnerability. Combining contrasting landscapes, Black bodies, and raw human emotion, Gebrehiwot explores the affective power of Black bodies in confronting the viewer's humanity and empathy.

His artistic exploration stems from his work with Black/pan-African diaspora communities in Toronto. As the former resident photographer at R.I.S.E. Edutainment (Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere), Gebrehiwot has intimately witnessed and documented the creative and unguarded evolutions of poets, musicians, and artists from across the city. Based in Scarborough, Gebrehiwot has worked to bring photography to youth in communities through organizations like the NIA Centre, The Power Plant, The Doris Mccarthy Gallery and the Art Gallery of York University. His connection to youth and community, combined with his sustained self-dissection and constant desire to evolve, helped him to identify black identities as a focal topic for photographic inquiry.