Refugee artists to design murals in their new hometown
Five refugee artists are recreating tape murals from their homes around Brattleboro.
Five refugee artists are recreating tape murals from their homes around Brattleboro.
Five refugee artists are recreating tape murals from their homes around Brattleboro.
Vermont has become home to over 8,000 refugees, with a recent influx from Afghanistan and the Middle East. To make them feel more at home, a new project is underway in Brattleboro.
The project is called "Honoring Honar", with Honar being an Afghani word that means art, said Danny Lichtenfeld, Director of Brattleboro Museum and Art Center.
Seventeen unique murals will be created throughout town by a total of five Afghan artists who live in Brattleboro.
Two artists from Boston will also make public art using tape, Lichtenfeld said.
These murals have a much deeper meaning than they appear to on the surface.
“Each mural consists of a reproduced portion of a mural that the Afghan artists had painted in Afghanistan but were painted over when the Taliban took control,” said Lichtenfeld.
The murals created in Afghanistan had very strong social justice meanings, which put the artists in danger when the Taliban came back.
“So these mural were really threatening to the Taliban and was literally one of the first things the Taliban did when they regained control about a year ago — they came in and painted over these murals. The artists all had to go into hiding and many of them fled the country," said Lichtenfeld.
Now safe in America, the artists will continue to create murals and share their old life with members of their new community.