BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Hugging his knees and clad in a bright orange life vest, the giant “Inflatable Refugee” looks vulnerable as he sits alone in a sea of empty red velvet chairs.
Sitting alone in a sea of empty red velvet chairs, a 6-meter-tall giant ‘Inflatable Refugee’ is photographed at Barcelona ’s Gran Teatre de Liceu opera house, Spain, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. Created by Belgian visual artists Schellekens & Peleman in 2015 following the refugee crisis in Europe by, they hope it to spark debate around the plight of refugees.
The 6-meter -tall inflatable figure, made of the same material as the delicate rubber boats used by smugglers to send migrants to European shores, will be on public display for opera goers until June 28 in the theater’s hall of mirrors. The artists hope that its outsize dimensions will force people to reflect about their perception of asylum seekers.
“Its size represents how the Western world perceives him. So you could ask yourself is it a big opportunity or a big problem?” Dirk Schellekens told The Associated Press in Barcelona.around the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict and other protracted crises, the U.N. refugee agency announced Thursday. That’s equivalent to the population of Japan.Even when Africans want to visit Europe legally, rejection rates are high.
“What concerns me most is the instrumentalization that some politicians have carried out in respect of refugees and, by the way, migrants as well,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told AP. “Depicting them as a threat, as people that come to steal jobs, to threaten values, to undermine security, is so worrying in so many ways ... and often extremely racist.”
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