Benchmark

The wet eye

One evening when I was in Ethiopia in a refugee camp called May-Ayni I was watching a movie and there were many people watching too, suddenly we heard screaming, shouting and crying. Everyone rushed the door and got out of the cinema center. We saw many immigrants lined up and began prostrating with loud and strong voices of screaming, others crying. I was shocked to See the crowd and that condition and have no idea what was happening and why they were there. After few minutes I saw a woman lamenting, and mourning bitterly uttering few words “My lovely, you have gone from my sight forever” My life is nothing without you, death is merciless” I watched my two eyes filled up, I understood and said to myself that there should be a boat that is sunk or something like that. And in my guess, I was right because it is not possible to see immigrants prostrating in streets wildly. After some time the speech was given telling the crowd that there a boat was sunk and there were about 300 of Eritrean people in it. The tears of a woman in the evening are one of the memories that I carry in my mind. My art was an inspiration of that moment.

I art is drawing “the eye” that  I was on that evening filled up and dropping tears down from it. A wet eye that can show you the wrong and violent condition of life that is imposed on those immigrants by their own government and leaders. Immigration is not something that can be chosen but rather it is imposed through different acts of violence of human rights, oppression, hunger, imprisonment, torture your land and most of the time by your leaders. And the only solution that you can do think of is just cry out, yell, weep, lament and grieve and all of these can solve nothing.

I had to go through different processes to complete my art project. The first thing was choosing four watercolors, and they are red, black, yellow and blue. I had to mix these colors to see what colors I can get when they are mixed in pairs.  I used the black for eyebrow, pupil, and iris. Yellow for painting the whole paper, red for areas below the eyebrow and below above eyelids and to represent the tears. And blue I mixed it with black to paint the Irish of an eye. This project is a new technique for me because I am using art to communicate things that are happening in the real world also I thought that my art also would represent different things besides that it was intended to communicate. One thing I can change would be colors or the size of the art.

In my humble opinion, I have learned that art is peaceful which gives us a way to communicate anything and everything.