Remembering Home

Remembering Home is an artwork by Grace Schwindt on display in Refugees: Forced to Flee.

Explore the audio associated with each piece of the artwork below. 

Each sculpture is based on a conversation with an individual refugee, in which they recalled their home before conflict. The sculptures are each accompanied by an audio piece, which is inspired by the sounds and events each refugee remembered.

Revealing the way memories and emotions can change or distort over time, Schwindt explores the complex feelings which surround the idea of ‘home’ for displaced people. Grace Schwindt is a German artist based in London. Her work frequently addresses historical events and questions concepts of narrative, truth, and fiction

In the 1930s Gerhard Süssman, the artist’s grandfather, lived in a Berlin apartment building occupied by several other German Jewish families. Gerhard remembers hearing fighting in the street, the scratching of his father’s pencil on paper, silent parties, whispered conversations, and the sound of steps on the stairs. He fled the Nazis in 1938. Some of the families in the building also escaped, but others were murdered.

Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Music by Tobias Vethake

At the start of the Bosnian War, Jasna and her family lived in a second-floor flat in Sarajevo. The city came under siege and, within days, the windows of the flat were broken and had to be replaced with plastic sheets. Only the kitchen window remained. Jasna stayed and continued to work in Sarajevo for over a year before she fled. Though she survived, many of her friends and family died.

Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Music by Tobias Vethake

Javed fled his home in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was still a child. His family had sold some of their land so that he could escape. Shortly after Javed left, his family lost their home, their land and their animals. Years later, Javed returned to Afghanistan to try and find his loved ones.

Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Music by Tobias Vethake

Sahar’s mother lived in Palestine. Near the entrance of the house was a swing, where she would sit and greet people as they came and went. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict forced her to escape to Syria, where Sahar was born and raised.

The family lived in a multi-storey building in Damascus and Sahar was in her kitchen when the first bombs fell on the neighbourhood. They eventually fled the country.

The artist has incorporated drawings by Sahar and her daughter Nour in this sculpture.

Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Music by Tobias Vethake

Xenia lived with her family in a house by the sea in northern Cyprus. In 1974, Turkey invaded. Xenia, who was a child at the time, remembers sitting on the veranda and spotting the first Turkish ships arriving. The family waited until morning and then fled to the mountains. Schwindt travelled with Xenia to see her childhood home, which is now occupied by a Turkish family.

Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Music by Tobias Vethake