Mohamad Hafez
Sculptor of Unpacked Refugee Baggage
A Syrian-American artist and architect, Mohamad Hafez was born in Damascus, raised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and educated in the Midwestern United States. Expressing the juxtaposition of East and West within him, Hafez’s art reflects the political turmoil in the Middle East through the compilation of found objects, paint and scrap metal. Using his architectural skills, Hafez creates surrealistic Middle Eastern streetscapes that are architectural in their appearance yet politically charged in their content.
Responding to the atrocities of the Syrian war, Hafez’s recent work depicts cities besieged by the civil war to capture the magnitude of the devastation and to expose the fragility of human life. However, in contrast to the violence of war, his art imbues a subtle hopefulness through its deliberate incorporation of verses from the Holy Quran. At the core of Hafez’s work, the verses offer a distinct contrast between the stark pessimistic reality of destruction and the optimistic hope for a bright future. Scenes reiterate narratives from the Qur’an to affirm that, even during the darkest of times, patience is necessary for the blossoming of life and that, eventually, justice will prevail.
Hafez work reflects his deep interest in the cross-disciplinary exploration of street art and the realistic, yet ironic sculptural work. He purposefully infuses a stark contrast between the scenes he creates and the messages imbued in his work. Messages could be verses from the holy Qur’an, audio recordings from his homeland, or other elements of Islamic heritage reflected in the architectural typography. Qur’anic calligraphy is presented as spray painted acts of revolutionary protest or as an audio loop from a hidden source to defy the iron fist of dictatorial regimes in the region.
His artwork has recently been featured in several highly acclaimed exhibitions and profiled on National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. Hafez is the recipient of a 2018 Connecticut Arts Hero Award for his extensive and continuous body of work on issues such as the Syrian civil war, the worldwide refugee crisis, and an overall desire to counter hate speech.
He currently serves as a 2018 Yale University Silliman College Fellow, Interpreter in Residence at U-Chicago Oriental Institute, and artist-in-residence at the Keller Center of Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago.
In 2019, he was selected as one of the 40 under 40 artists in the Middle East by London’s Apollo Magazine.
Ahmed Badr
Story Teller of Unpacked Refugee Baggage
Ahmed is a writer, social entrepreneur, poet, and former Iraqi refugee working at the intersection of creativity, displacement, and youth empowerment. On July 25th, 2006, Ahmed's home in Baghdad was bombed by militia troops. He and his family relocated to Syria as refugees for two and a half years before receiving approval to move to the United States. Ahmed founded Narratio, a platform for youth empowerment through creative expression. Narratio publishes works of art from all over the globe, and hosts workshops centered around the power of storytelling and creativity. In the summer of 2019, Narratio launched a storytelling Fellowship for resettled refugee youth in partnership with Syracuse University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the last three years, Ahmed’s storytelling initiatives have reached over 20 million people across the world.
“This [hate infused] rhetoric has driven the media’s portrayal of refugees, which makes it important for people like Badr to stand up and tell a different story.
— Casey Tolan, Fusion (Splinter News)
Ahmed is a senior at Wesleyan University, where he is a Fellow at the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life. Ahmed is the former host of the “A Way Home Together” podcast, which he created for the UN Migration Agency and seeks to catalogue the stories and experiences of migrants and refugees across the U.S. His newest podcast project is “Resettled” which he will be co-hosting for Virginia Public Media in the Spring of 2020. “Resettled” focuses on the refugee resettlement process in the U.S. through the eyes of those that are directly experiencing it. This past September, Ahmed took part in the “Voices for the Future” audiovisual installation alongside Greta Thunberg and four other youth advocates. The installation features the voices and words of six youth advocates projected on the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Ahmed is currently working on his debut book which focuses on the creative expression of refugee youth across the world, to be published by Andrews McMeel in 2020. Having spoken at the United Nations on more than ten occasions before the age of 20, his work has been featured and supported by SAP, OECD, BuzzFeed Tasty, TEDxTeen, Instagram, NPR, Global Citizen, and others. Ahmed serves as one of 17 UN Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals in the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth.