Can you handle his flight experience on the Mediterranean sea. You can – with the project “ocean man” to the Maltese in Ahaus, near Münster.
The screams on the hose and the wood-cutters, silent boats. Women and children pray. Men are silent or talk on phone with Relatives, because they fear that they will capsize at any Moment. The refugees are on the larger wooden boats stacked in five layers on top of each other. The smugglers want to absorb as many people as possible. The more people the more profit. Every single refugee will pay for this Horror, on average between 1500 to 4000 euros. The total part of 40 family members and neighbors in the hope to allow at least a people from their environment, “happiness in Europe”.
The Iraqi Thamer (22) and the Syrians Khabat (33), his wife, and his two children managed to come to Germany – in an Odyssey, which led, in part, by seven countries. In Germany, you were lucky. After a stay in a refugee camp they came to the Maltese. The Catholic relief organization provides the refugees so-called “integration pilots”, people who help refugees in everyday life questions.
The work and the grief
Thamer and Khabat set with the Maltese in Ahaus-Alstätte, close to the Dutch border pallets in a plurality of floors in a Oval on top of each other. The pallets should be for Europe. In the middle of this Installation you put grave stones made of plaster and crosses as a Symbol for all the people who have not survived the escape with the boats on the Mediterranean sea.
The Installation “Freight Man”
Thamers father died, for example. Nevertheless, Thamer almost looks serene. How come? Ines Ambaum, the artistic head of the project, explains: “Thamer is still young and he does not want to lose face. He wants to prove to the Older, especially the Muslims, who tease him constantly because he is a Kurd, that he is a hard man”. Many of the refugees show “multiple faces”. Everyone has their own personal reason. But with each day, the women and men working on the art, open yourself up to the artist. With each bolt the memories back drill on the flight over the Mediterranean sea. The objective of this project is that the refugees process their experiences, in a work of art to work in and the people to their plight.
Absolute Nightmares
The experiences that come to language, are appalling. So men have taken it from Eritrea to their sisters. For the protection of the women, the men from Eritrea claimed that it was their wives. This is a fatal error. Because the facilitator knew that the information not agreed to, and drove a perverse madness. They called on the men from Eritrea, with their alleged women Sex, to be allowed into the escape boats. Because Eritrea refused, the traffickers to rape the women themselves. Grey full. Many of these women were the first in Germany that they were pregnant. Not a few killed.
“If you imagine that the people who have experienced something like that, attacked in Germany, of xenophobic people and pedestrian zones are being hunted, which acts like a second rape,” says Ines Ambaum. The Installation in the Kunsthalle of Ahaus, you give the title of “ocean man.” Each visitor of the exhibition should be clear that something is wrong here. People are, of course, no cargo. But the reality in North Africa looks different. Refugees are treated like freight. It tears flow again and again. Then all the silence.
Khabat, Thamer and artist Ines Ambaum in the Assembly
The artist is a friend
“Chanzla” – “Chancellor” – is the name of Thamer, the artist, in the meantime, and welcomes you with great joy. He is grateful that she has been listening to him for so often only. Why, then, not even out of gratitude, a hug? “Ines is also a human being,” says Thamer in somewhat broken English, which he mastered after a year of language course, but often surprisingly perfect. A woman does not embrace, with the man is married, this is a strictly forbidden and absolutely sinful action in his home country of Iraq. “This is exactly the Problem,” says the artist.
Thamer lost his father on the run
“Before marriage, Muslims are prohibited to have Sex. You don’t learn, to satisfy himself, to take the pressure”. Just recently, a refugee came to her, had complained of “severe pain” in the abdomen. You should call a doctor. The came also, and found that the fugitive had only a morning erection. The man didn’t know that. No one had told him anything. It is simply forbidden, with the topic.
Nobody’s listening
“By working with the refugees has changed my life totally,” says Ines Ambaum. While she found it exciting to fly with the budget airline, only for a Breakfast to Paris, so something for you today is unimaginable. “If you followed the fates of the refugees, passes a this decadence”. This also includes the behaviour of many Germans who would get upset over every little thing come. “Many of the problems between Germans and foreigners, because you compare yourself constantly with others.” In the case of the refugees to be seen, for example, always according to the mobile phones. Woe, if someone has a more modern, as you have it for yourself. “We pay all of our tax money” that had some of her friends scolded her, but overlook the fact that a cell phone means the only connection of the refugees to their families in the home.
Artist Ines Ambaum: “I’m confident that 98 percent of all refugees are absolutely capable of integration”.
There are no more of these friends in your environment. Ines has to get away from them. The fell easily to her. The supposed friends you had, after all, from a neighbourhood WhatsApp group thrown. The reason is that Ines had invited 20 of the refugees to their birthday party. “Then why don’t you go to the wogs” had to Ines to listen to. “Often I lie in bed at night and just cry in front of me.” Hope to give her, then, that you have experienced directly, such as the developed of your assisted refugees in Germany. “98 percent of them are fully integrable. But no one writes me,” laments Ines Ambaum. “The press sounds too positive and does not fit, apparently, in the spirit of the times. But it is true. I experience it every day.” The Syrians Khabat proves it. He is after two and a half years so far, that he works for the Maltese, who have helped him as a driver. With a German driver’s license in the Arabic language.