Ginane Makki Bacho (Born Beirut, Lebanon, 1947. Refugees, 2018, Steel, each: 76.2×12.7×22.9 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

I have always dreamed of peace, freedom, and happiness. However, in real life we are surrounded by hatred, injustice, and continuous deprivation of the most basic of human rights. When the civil war broke out in 1975 in Lebanon my family’s journey of survival started, fleeing from one place to another, seeking refuge first in France then the United States.

My art revolves around my experiences through the various traumatic wars I witnessed not only in Lebanon but in the region since then. I immersed myself in a cathartic task by depicting the disasters I witnessed.
After years of watching the war in Syria and the spread and horrors of ISIS through the media, I threw myself into reenacting the exodus of the thousands of people attempting to escape and find sanctuary elsewhere, to spare their families from imminent death. Sadly, many of them drowned or were lost at sea. These spectacles that the media was covering were something I had witnessed early in my life during the Lebanese civil war, but the Syrian refugee crisis is on a totally different scale.