Detours, a new exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center

The Nobel Peace Center’s new exhibition is about people who are living in forced displacement. Detours highlights a topic that is highly relevant in Norway, in Europe and in the US. Internationally renowned artists and photographers present a different image of refugees, than what we normally see.

Detours is a group exhibition with works by international artists and photographers, who depict life in forced displacement, in very different ways. Through humour and sarcasm, and with diaries and text messages from refugees, the audience will draw closer to those who have been forced to flee from Syria. They meet young women who left Syria to study before the outbreak of war, and have been unable to return home since. They meet Syrian men, who have fled across the border into Lebanon, and send desperate messages home to their families. They meet Syrian children, who are trying to stay courageous while their lives are put on hold in a refugee camp, far from home. They have one thing in common: they are safe from the bombing, but they have lost their home country and their dreams for the future. Their lives have taken a detour.

“WithDetours, we want to give people a better insight into what the issue we call the ‘refugee crisis’ is all about”, says executive director Liv Tørres. “The situation of refugees is often described with empathy and sorrow, or with rejection. This exhibition shows that refugees are perfectly ordinary people – the difference is simply that they have been forced to flee their homes.”

Since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first time in 1901, many people and institutions have received the award for their efforts on behalf of those fleeing from war. Fridtjof Nansen, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Doctors without Borders and Malala Yousafzai are some of the laureates who have been concerned about highlighting the plight of refugees and helping those who have been displaced.

Detours consists of five photo series, several films, a contemporary artwork and – a bar. The “Bias Bar” looks like an ordinary bar and, as all other bars, it is a meeting place where guests can engage in discussions and share thoughts. However, featured on the menu, they will find prejudices about refugees and integration.

“Bias is deeply rooted in us, but often expressed in closed rooms. We want to lift this part of the refugee debate into a public space. We hope that the exhibition, and the Bias Bar, will provide a better understanding of the situation for people in forced displacement”, Tørres says.

The works in Detours:

Exile is a photo series, created in partnership with the photo agency Magnum Photos. It shows a stream of refugees, stretching all the way back to the 1940s, documented by legendary photographers, such as Robert Capa, Stuart Franklin and Paolo Pellegrin.

Our Limbo is a diary-inspired portrayal of the lives of five young Syrian women, who travelled to Lebanon to study, before the war broke out. The war has made it impossible for them to return, and now they are stranded in different countries around the world. Documentary photographer, Natalie Naccache, is behind the project, and the exhibition is a combination of her photos and photos taken by the Syrian women.

Live, Love, Refugee is a series of surreal and humorous photographs. Yet, behind every image hides a painful story. The Syrian photographer, Omar Imam, has staged various situations in a refugee camp in Lebanon. He says he wishes to challenge the audience, by disrupting their expectations of images of refugees.

Texting Syria shows portraits of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, who keep in touch with their family back home, through text messages. The audience receives the messages that were sent, at the exact moment the photo was taken, on their own mobile phones. This way, the audience gets closer to the refugees, to their fears and their worries. The photographer, Liam Maloney, was recently nominated to the 2016 Tim Hetherington Visionary Award.

Finding One’s Shadow in the Ruins and Rubble is an art installation, consisting of 31 small light boxes, showcasing images of buildings that have been bombed to pieces, in the Syrian city of Homs. From a distance, it looks beautiful. Yet, as one gets closer, the cruel destructions of war appear, along with the very reason why many Syrians are forced to flee. The creation is by the Vietnamese-American artist, Tiffany Chung, and belongs to the Louisiana Museum of Modern art, in Denmark.

In Syria is my only home, children from Syria tell the story of life in the shadow of war. In short video-documentaries, they speak of life in the refugee camp in Lebanon, about missing their homeland and the dream of one day returning home. The photos in the exhibition were taken with disposable cameras, by the children themselves. The exhibition is made in partnership with the organisation Zakira and Unicef.

For individual appointments, contact our Director of Information, Ingvill Bryn Rambøl, by phone: 924 52 944, or by email: ibr@nobelpeacecenter.org.

Detours officially opens on Tuesday 14^th of March, at 18.00 o’clock. The press is welcome to the opening. The photographers, Liam Maloney, Omar Imam and Natalia Naccache, will be present and available for interviews

The exhibition opens to the audience on Wednesday, the 15^th of March, and will remain on display until the 3^rd of September. Read more about the exhibition, at the Nobel Peace Center’s website.