By Luke Voogt
Geelong’s Myanmarese youth will share their journeys to Australia this weekend in an exhibition celebrating Refugee Week.
Htoo Ko Lo Ra is one of the Karen and Karenni refugees telling his story through art in the Here and There exhibition.
“I’m not a professional painter,” the 22-year-old said. “But it’s good to do something different and fun.”
Htoo Ko Lo’s parents fled eastern Myanmar to a Thailand refugee camp.
They were part of an ethnic group which the Myanmar (formerly Burma) Government persecuted with forced labour and relocation and the burning of villages, since 1949.
“When the army came they had to run away,” Htoo Ko Lo said.
“The government just tried to kill everybody and they burnt down my parents’ house in their village.”
Htoo Ko Lo spent 16 years growing up in limbo in the refugee camp, until his parents immigrated to Australia in 2010.
“You can’t go back to the country you came from – you just have to wait until a country chooses you,” he said. “There’s nothing to do in the refugee camp.”
He said coming to Australia allowed his family “to forget the past and move on”. More than 200 Karen and Karenni people live in the Geelong region.
“It’s good here – everything’s easy. You don’t have to go looking for food or get wood to make a fire.”
“You can do anything you want here.”
The refugees painted both their “old” and “new” lives for the exhibition, explained Htoo Ko Lo’s brother Hserkutha.
“On the left side of my self-portrait, the leaves represent the jungle around the refugee camp,” he said. “On the right side are buildings which represent Australia to me.
“It was strange to see buildings and places so different to the jungle when I came here. I couldn’t believe how many cars there were and how busy it was.”
The exhibition resulted from a project called Drawn Together, where Karen and Karenni youths worked with Barwon Heads artist Liz McGrath.
With the support of Geelong’s Bluebird Foundation, Liz provided support, materials and tuition to the group.
“The self-portraits and landscapes capture just a little of the stories these remarkable young people have to share,” the foundation’s Bron Lawson said.
“To understand their lives helps connect our community and make it a richer place to live.”
The youths were aged between 14 and 22 years and had all lived in refugee camps in Thailand.
“While living in camps, and despite access to only basic materials, many of these young people developed a passion for drawing and art,” Bron said.
“They have a keen desire to extend their artistic skills but as school-based art programs have a large folio component that requires high-level English skills, they are often unable to pursue this passion into the senior grades in our school system.”
Here and There opens to the public from 19 to 23 June upstairs at Courthouse Youth Arts.
