{"id":4709,"date":"2017-10-30T09:03:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T07:03:17","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-01-29T12:16:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T10:16:29","slug":"bibiche","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/faces-stories\/bibiche\/","title":{"rendered":"Bibiche"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Bibiche\"
Bibiche (Congo)<\/em>, 2017,\u00a0Gicl\u00e9e fine art print, 120 x 160 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bibiche<\/strong>
\n33 years old<\/strong>
\nCongo<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I\u2019d like to thank all the organizations that put this program together. May God bless them, because each day we learn something new. Every time we come to the Museum1<\/sup> there are always images to see, and each of them symbolises something. They sometimes bring on very intense feelings that make me want to cry, but then I think, what I\u2019m looking at is art, and thinking of this helps. Here at the Museum2<\/sup> I felt for the first time in my life that as a human being I am a work of art, too\u2014that each of us is a work of art, with their own story to tell and messages to convey. And I want to say to all my brothers and sisters here, to the refugees, compatriots and friends\u2014call them what you will, I think of them as family\u2014that we have the chance here to light up the darker places in our mind, the dark memories of the terrible things we\u2019ve experienced, and to feel human again.<\/p>\n

I understand and feel for the man3<\/sup> who was so moved by Bill Viola\u2019s work4<\/sup>. But I want to tell him he needs to chase away the despair he\u2019s caught in. Looking at this work, I felt in the end a kind of optimism because I thought, I\u2019ve made it through a very difficult time. I lived through a tragedy but in the end, I managed to get to Greece, and now I\u2019m ready to rid myself of the hopelessness inside me and start a new life.<\/p>\n

This work, then, shows us a group of people gathered together, all from different nationalities, just like us. Each of them is doing something different\u2014one of them is reading, another is listening to music, etc.\u2014while we\u2019re all sitting here around a table discussing the same thing. Among the figures in the image is a man who\u2019s perhaps a priest, or the leader of a church or religion, or maybe a political figure. He\u2019s reading something and wants to communicate with the others, and everyone around him seems ready to listen to him. But at the same time, it also feels like they can\u2019t communicate with each other or understand what the others have on their mind. They\u2019re willing to talk to each other, but, in the end, that doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

That happens a lot in real life, too. People from different countries want to communicate and find solutions to their problems but then some outside force, like the water in the artwork we\u2019re talking about, comes and stops them. It prevents people\u2014and different countries, too\u2014from taking that very first step to communicate with each other. But we also see that even though there is a violence in the way the water is attacking these people, at the same time it\u2019s as if the water is waking them up and they\u2019ll recover later and change their attitude.<\/p>\n

In the work with the harpooned fish and the portraits around it5<\/sup>, I saw a symbol of hope. When hope ceases to exist or when it\u2019s damaged, then, as time goes on, a sense of disappointment emerges. And if people lose hope on their journey from youth to old age, it\u2019s like moving from life to death. That\u2019s what came to mind when I saw the last picture with the elderly man. I believe that even when you feel imprisoned\u2014trapped\u2014like the fish in the picture in the middle, you mustn\u2019t give up trying, wherever you are, however trapped you feel. Otherwise, old age will leave you paralyzed.<\/p>\n

As a refugee, I felt that the fish also symbolized all that sense of confinement I\u2019ve experienced: first the horrible events I experienced in my village, and then the very hard and painful journey I made to escape, and now, my wounded present. I left my country for political reasons and now I\u2019m here, alone with my children, and I don\u2019t know if my husband is alive or dead. Even though what happened to me is a reality that seems to be stronger than I am, I have to try to get over it, to leave it behind and make a new start. For me, the artwork with the fish is very much like the journey of my life and the gradual passage from youth to old age. I feel these days like the wounded fish; the only thing I\u2019m afraid of is old age. I want to do something with my life, to achieve something, to make something of myself before I reach the darkness of old age. Because if life is a fish and you lose it, you have to catch another one and continue with that one. In the end, that man6<\/sup> isn\u2019t just an artist. He\u2019s a philosopher, and his work is profound and realistic.<\/p>\n

The threads in Janine Antoni\u2019s work7<\/sup> symbolize for me the pain and effort we need to make to achieve what we want, and the blanket the artist has woven is the help we give each other. I really appreciated what Zainab8<\/sup> had to say to us about her dream for the future. I also have a dream like that: I hope one day to work in the European Union as my country\u2019s ambassador and work for peace.<\/p>\n

Here in Greece they say \u201csiga-siga\u201d <\/em>(little by little). We need to be patient in order to become what we want to be. As they say in every religion, we must stand together, hand in hand. Only in this way, truly united, in a country that makes this unity possible, only in this way can we move on and create a new history from the beginning.<\/p>\n

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1\u00a0<\/sup>Refers to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens.
\n2\u00a0<\/sup>Refers to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens.
\n3\u00a0<\/sup>She\u2019s referring to Ghassan, who also took part in the programme.
\n4\u00a0<\/sup>The Raft<\/em>, 2004.
\n5\u00a0<\/sup>Refers to Costas Tsoclis\u2019 Portraits<\/em>, 1986 and The Harpooned Fish<\/em>, 1985.
\n6\u00a0<\/sup>Refers to Costas Tsoclis.
\n7\u00a0<\/sup>Refers to the work Slumber<\/em>, 1994
\n8\u00a0<\/sup>She\u2019s referring to Zainab, a 16-year-old girl from Afghanistan, who took part in the program.<\/p>\n

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Audio Files<\/strong><\/h5>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]\u0395\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03bd\u03b9\u03ba\u03ac<\/p>\n

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English<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/mp3\/Bibishe-E.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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\u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/mp3\/Bibishe-A.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633\u06cc<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/mp3\/Bibishe-F.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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[vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″]Slovensk\u00fd<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/mp3\/Bibiche_33_Kongo.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1511022388651{margin-top: 30px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text] Bibiche 33 years old Congo I\u2019d like to thank all the organizations that put this program together. May God bless them, because each day we learn something new. Every time we come to the Museum1 there are always images to see, and each of them symbolises something. They sometimes bring on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":18,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4709","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4709"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7953,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4709\/revisions\/7953"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceforward.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}