At the beginning of August, in a refugee camp run by UNICEF near Athens, Rome-based street artist Alice Pasquini, , and young artist Achilleas Souras have created a project that has involved the children hosted in the camp. Over 180 minors, aged between 3 and 17, have taken part in the workshop with Achilleas and Alice at the Skaramagkas Open Accommodation Site, in the event organised by UNICEF and Elix, a local NGO.
Alice Pasquini told SBS Italian that she met Achilleas during the Human Rights Festival in Milan, where they were both invited as guests. Together they decided to create a project for the refugee camp "to create a place which could be kid-friendly, more joyous". They decided to work in a space where children could play basketball, painting on a wall a group of kids that almost seem to be walking through the wall, a highly symbolic image.
The minors who took part in the project come from various countries, mainly from Syria. In a multilingual and lively atmosphere, Achilleas and Alice did not feel it was hard to convice the kids to join in: they happily started to write and paint on the wall leaving messages of peace and hope in their own languages or in Greek.
Achilleas Souras with some of the kids Source: courtesy of Unicef
A young refugee at the workshop Source: courtesy of Unicef
Skaramagkas is a refugee camp located in the broader area of Piraeus Port, and is home to over 2,500 refugees and migrants. According to UNICEF, more than half of them are children. are currently in Greece, 29 percent of them live in open accommodation sites around the country.
Alice Pasquini has worked before in similar contexts: the Italian street artist says she loves working in places like this, where different cultures meet, and she remembers among others her experience in Caritas-run centres in Rome.
Achilleas, who is 18-years-old, had already come to the fore a few years ago with , which was exhibited worldwide. SOS (Save Our Souls) was an installation that aimed to be “a response to the current refugee crisis”.
Alice Pasquini at work Source: Solomon Athanatos Unicef 2018
At the time more than 450,000 life-jackets were said to have accumulated on the island of Lesbos alone, and Achilleas, who is of Greek origins, decided to work with these discarded objects which offered “protection in water”, to transform them in a "shelter on land," ultimately an object of hope.
While in both cases Achilleas has dealt with the issue of migrants and refugees, the artist stresses that “the igloos were a way to raise awareness, this [mural project] was more hands-on”. While working on the mural Alice and Achilleas spent a joyful and carefree day with the young guests of the refugee camp, and Achilleas told that he likes to think that "after the kids contributed to completing the final piece they want to stay and hang out there, that it’s become a hang-out place."
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