This exhibition at the University of South Wales was the result of a six-week participatory project working with refugees and asylum seekers at Oasis support centre in Cardiff, in collaboration with writer Emma Musty.

The project involved six weeks of workshops where participants shared stories through creative writing with collage, found imagery, maps and drawing. Through monoprinting and screenprinting work was collated and collaged into larger than life-size silhouettes. The project aimed to highlight issues faced by migrants and those seeking asylum, giving a platform, through creative processes, for people to tell their story.

“Standing in line’; an evolving, participant orientated collaboration, producing work and research on issues faced by people seeking sanctuary in Britain.

According to measures of citizenship, the figures do not exist, and have no identity, as someone with no passport, no papers, and without asylum status is not accorded a position within the state. Yet the figures are many people, they have a presence, they create, they communicate and they have a story to tell. They inhabit real lives, lived and living, some are refugees and asylum seekers, some have status and some are waiting. The workshops began with projecting participants shadows onto the wall and drawing around them to create the figurative shapes. Shapes that show presence but with no solid identity representing the fragile and transient lives experienced by people seeking refuge.”

Extract from exhibition statement by Nichola Goff