From the social media movement ‘Now You See Me Moria’ to the Hope Art Project, refugees in Lesvos are using digital platforms to disrupt restrictive legislation, practices and discourses inflicted on them by state authorities.[1]

In this article I reflect on refugees’ visual-digital struggles. My reflections are grounded in two online ethnographic studies of the imagery (photographs, videos, screenshots and paintings) produced by refugees in Lesvos, that I carried out during 2022 and 2023. Refugees’ expression of their rights claims through visual arts and social media has been especially significant given the rising hostility and silencing efforts against them, and the restrictions imposed by the Greek authorities on journalists, human rights advocates and non-governmental organisations trying to monitor the situation on the Greek islands.

Creating visual stories of refugeehood at the Hope Art Project

The Hope Project was established on the Greek island of Lesvos following the summer of migration in 2015. The founders, Philippa and Eric Kempson, initially aimed to provide for the basic, urgent necessities of people arriving at the island. Over time, they recognised the need for catharsis and healing through art, and they began an art project in 2018. Since then, many refugees inhabiting the notorious Moria camp have attended workshops on diverse themes, including theatre, music and painting.

Painting has been an important getaway space, a mental sanctuary for the artists, away from the camp’s turmoil.[2] Artists from various countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan and Congo, have produced paintings at the Hope Art Project. In the right-hand corner of each, the artists sign their shared identity: ‘Moria refugee’. Philippa describes these paintings as, ‘slightly edgy and political’; they reflect on the impact of the EU and Greek asylum laws and policies, refugees’ arduous migratory journeys towards Greece, their living conditions in Moria, and their hopes and dreams concerning an often-uncertain future.

To date, the artists have produced over 10,000 paintings, some of which have been displayed in online and on-site exhibitions and shared digitally. Several artworks have been exhibited in renowned places like St James’s Church in London. In an art exhibition entitled ‘A Place in My Mind’, curated both online and offline by Norwegian artists in 2021, artworks created by many artists at the Hope Project were able to reach a wider audience across borders. Well-known news outlets have covered stories of the Hope Project artists and their artworks.

The artists were unable to travel freely even to the Greek mainland, so they could not attend the physical exhibitions of their artworks outside Lesvos or meet with other artists and people promoting their artworks, yet they were able to collaborate in cyberspace. Many of the artists, most of whom finally settled in European countries after years of being in legal limbo in Lesvos, endeavoured to publicise their artworks through their personal social media accounts. Elleni Kempson, daughter of Eric and Philippa and social media coordinator at the Hope Project, has shared many of the artworks through the Instagram account ‘Hope Art Project’ and Fine Art America, an online repository where visual artists can share and sell their artwork.

The wide dissemination of the visual stories told by refugee artists at the Hope Project Greece was made possible through their active use of digital technologies, particularly social media. These technologies created collaboration opportunities and enabled the artists to reach a broader audience. At the same time, art and digital technologies have transformed even the most mundane depoliticised spaces, namely the art workshops and painting canvases, into spaces where refugee artists speak their mind with their own narratives. These narratives disrupt the dehumanising portrayal of refugees by some media outlets and decision makers.

Challenging the status quo: ‘Now You See Me Moria’

For refugees who do not have access to art workshops in Moria where they can recount their own stories, smartphones are vital tools for communicating with the outside world and for survival in everyday life. Smartphones (with sufficient internet connection) are also digital tools for raising refugee voices against the atrocities and abysmal living conditions refugees encounter in Lesvos. Smartphones help refugees narrate and disseminate their own stories of refugeehood. That is how the Now You See Me Moria campaign emerged as a collaboration of Moria inhabitants and ‘outsiders’, to show the world what is happening and demand respect for refugee rights.

Now You See Me Moria was started in 2020 by two people who met online: Amir, an Afghan refugee inhabiting the Moria refugee camp, and Noemí, a Spanish photographer and photo editor based in the Netherlands. Their initiative quickly became a social media movement with the participation of over 600 refugees on Instagram,[3] with over 41,300 followers (March 2024), hundreds of engagements, likes and comments by their audience. Since August 2020, refugees have clandestinely recorded and disclosed over 4,500 posts (photographs, videos and screenshots) and countless ‘Insta stories’ from their everyday life in Lesvos. While exposing imagery from inside Moria and the Lesvos Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC), they also make the cruelties and inhumane conditions refugees encounter visible.

It has been widely documented by non-governmental organisations that the CCACs inaugurated on the five Greek islands are ‘prison like’, and in 2023 the European Court of Human Rights reiterated that the Greek hotspots have undignified conditions. Now You See Me Moria aims to stop the construction of the new Lesvos CCAC, which they consider ‘a prison’ that will create an equally degrading environment. Their #nochildinaprison campaign demands that no children are subject to detention in refugee camps, ‘far away from the colourful world they deserve’.

Now You See Me Moria could not exist or have expanded without cyberspace. The rapid growth of this photography project is noteworthy, especially considering the absence of centralised leadership. Each refugee freely participates, records and shares online what they see in Lesvos without any directives. Their advocacy efforts have frequently received external support; refugees and their allies across the globe have demonstrated how they can use social media to build a movement across borders. Using digital technologies, refugees involved in Now You See Me Moria attempt to reach EU decision makers and those who can influence them. Most of their posts are written in English to target an international audience.

Those acting for refugees have shown their support in various ways, both in cyberspace and public spaces. Refugees, often together with their online audience, actively ‘tag’ decision makers (such as the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen and Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson), human rights organisations (such as Amnesty International) and the media in their posts on Instagram. The audience has also endorsed the movement by drafting legal reports to stop the construction of Lesvos CCAC, advocating for the rights of children detained in Lesvos, finding legal support, creating thought-provoking posters to raise awareness, and selling t-shirts to provide food vouchers for refugees and uphold their right to adequate food. With the collaboration of outsiders, the movement also published an action book (a tool for those who wish to protest) and organised poster and photography exhibitions across Europe, including in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; in Brussels, Belgium; in Vienna, Austria; in Rome, Italy; and in Düsseldorf and Burgrieden, Germany.

Those involved in the movement face significant risks because of soaring hostility towards refugees from outside Europe, the criminalisation of refugee activism and advocacy efforts, and accusations of espionage in Greece. For this reason, refugees sharing photographs from Lesvos try to remain anonymous, while sharing images that represent their everyday life and supplementing them with powerful political captions.

In the long run, the activists at Now You See Me Moria also aim to build a database that will function as an easily accessible online archive of visual materials for those who are interested in learning more about the plight of Moria refugees. The database could serve as a collective memory of refugeehood and as legal evidence to be used in the courts, including the European Court of Human Rights.

The politics of disruption and transformation in Lesvos

The Hope Art Project and Now You See Me Moria have helped many refugees in Lesvos to:

1. challenge stereotypes and dominant legal, policy, and media discourses portraying refugees as victims, invaders or criminals;
2. reclaim their voice to narrate their own circumstances and future and claim an audience;
3. challenge the Greek and EU policies and practices on migration and asylum that they are exposed to, and
4. raise awareness about these policies and practices.

The two examples show that art and digital technologies can be disruptive and transformative in many ways. Refugees at both Now You See Me Moria and the Hope Art Project endeavour to widely share stories and experiences of refugeehood from their own perspectives and through their own voices. At the same time, they make the violence of Europe’s borders visible with the aim of mobilising their audience to improve the situation of refugees in Europe. Social media posts by refugees at Now You See Me Moria have even caught the attention of the Greek police on the island. Refugees claim that the police tried to track refugees’ smartphones to find who shared ‘insider information’ from the camps.

Refugees who were not able to express their opinions through peaceful assembly in public spaces did so through their digital and creative practices. Those I interviewed stated that many refugees were afraid to speak freely as their asylum applications could be adversely affected. For refugee artists at the Hope Project, art is their voice and social media helps them to spread their art. Refugees at Now You See Me Moria are also able to anonymously share images from their everyday life, speak up and reach a transnational audience with the help of digital technologies.

Understanding the ways in which the uses of digital technologies by refugees are disruptive and transformative comes also with understanding challenges for ethics, positionality and change. One needs to be mindful of the trap of ‘voyeurism’, or lustful and desensitising effects of the images (especially photographs) showing the human rights abuses inflicted on refugees, to keep a safe, critical distance to these images. As a viewer of the imagery shared by refugees in cyberspace, a researcher’s role lies also in transforming oneself from the viewing subject into the acting one through scientific research and its dissemination via reputable channels. This is especially important in a world where refugee stories are still not deemed credible or relevant, a world where it is crucial to counter oversimplified and reductive depictions of refugees. As an immigrant-researcher, I have sought to reflect refugees’ stories ‘in their great diversity’ and convey refugees’ voices to a broader readership.

Refugee action through art and social media may not always incite change in ways that can be measured. Nonetheless, to echo Noemí’s words, doing something, as opposed to nothing, may eventually lead to lasting and positive change for refugees. Art and social media can be effectively used to raise awareness of situations where refugees’ rights are denied, their voices muted, and where their struggles would otherwise be invisible.

 

Berfin Nur Osso
Doctor of Laws (LLD) candidate, University of Helsinki, Finland
berfin.osso@helsinki.fi  X:@bossoloji

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[1] With sincere thanks to Philippa Kempson, Eric Kempson, and Noemí for their collaboration, and hundreds of artists at the Hope Project and activists at Now You See Me Moria whose struggles inspired me in the preparation of this article. The real names of persons are used with their permissions, and last names are omitted for privacy.

[2] Interview (online) by the author with Philippa Kempson and Eric Kempson, 14 May 2022.

[3] Interview (online) by the author with Noemí, 17 April 2023.