HOPE PAINTERS: MAFRAQ / Jordan 2019
WALLS OF HOME
Location: Mafraq (Jordan)
When: Aug 2019
Background: “HOPE PAINTERS” is an ongoing project to create hopeful images at the home of people, who are living under desperate situations, with struggles of health/social issues, unemployment, domestic violence or traumatised experiences. The idea was inspired by many reports on the theme of the impact of art in community, Marschall* said a mural art can channel energies (of people) into the right direction, it contains the power of reducing violence and crimes, by giving them a constructive environment. (*COMMUNITY MURAL ART IN SOUTH AFRICA, by Sabine Marschall, 2002)
Goal: To beautify a home so the inhabitants can reclaim the ownership of the place, to transform the physical space to a home for them to feel they belong to.
THE HIDDEN STORY (by Damon Lam)
We were painting a wall on the street outside the Noiva learning centre in Mafraq, with lines, shapes and colours, with images of flowers and plants, kids were passing by and sometimes they stayed longer to help us painting.
A woman from the neighbourhood family approached to our friend Anna and asked her:
“I realized that my house has nothing beautiful, everything is broken and there is nothing I look at and like it. Could these artists come to my home to paint something beautiful for me on my walls?”
She’s from Syria and because of the war situation, her family fled to Jordan seven years ago. Now they are living inside a building with many families with similar circumstances. Since then her husband is trying to find any job to support the family. In all these years they supported the other families in the same building, tried to encourage each other and look forward to get back home to Syria. After all these year they start to feel very desperate, the unspoken pain of not knowing if they could ever return home, the temporarily status of living made them difficult to make/feel home. We asked her what kind of images she would like to have, she mentioned about the flowers on the wall we’re painting and said:
“Something like this on my wall would be great!”
One of the wish deeply longing in our hearts, is to go to visit families’ home and to paint hopeful image their walls. When she approached us by her initiation, we felt God has sent her to us, The only capacity of time we have, is the last day afternoon of the project week.
Right before we go to her home, i have just finished two wisdom teeth removal operations by the dentist clinic, plus the intensive opening party of the learning centre and the wall paintings with community. Me and Rahel both felt very tired and exhausted in the moment we arrived her flat, she has 10 kids, from baby age to a young adult, moreover she is expecting her new born baby to come very soon!
She welcomed us very warmly, their walls have paint scratched off, apart from the long cushion on floor for sitting, there’s almost no furniture. The window was broken. There’s nothing on the wall except a TV, the window to the outside world of news from home. We try to find a good way to set up the paint buckets and brushes and slowly we realised they have no table at all. We found a creative solution to put the materials on some storage carton boxes in the corner, to avoid the little cheeky boy to take our colours and splitting them all around. While painting the wall, the kids were driving bikes in between us, running and jumping, all the time ready for new ideas.
We painted some roses for her, because it gives the image of beauty, a picture for a change. To make this place feel more home.
When we finished she served us with delicious homemade pizzas and pastries, which is really valuable and precious. She shared with us her talents of cooking with passion to show us a glimpse of her culture and we shared with her our gift of using art to bring hope.
“I feel so happy to see the roses on my wall, it’s so beautiful, so beautiful it makes me cry.”