Art from the Lost Boys of Sudan

Project Kenya by the African Refugee Artists Club

ARAC is a group of refugees with a variety of art experiences and skills. They formed ARAC as a way to organize their efforts in telling their stories of life as refugees for the benefit of society through their art. In May of 2004, they hosted a 12-day workshop at Kakuma refugee camp in the northern part of Kenya. The request to attend the workshop was high but due to limited funds and lack of materials, only 20 artists were able to attend. ($1 of donated funds went to a day's meal for each participant!) More information on ARAC.

I want to sincerely thank you for your interest in the African Refugee Artists Club and the Lost Boys & Girls of Sudan. Your donate will help me to purchase art supplies for the young artists in the Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya. I know from personal experience that this kind of support helps Refugees; it brings hope and gladness to them otherwise bleak landscape of despair there in Northern Kenya.

Your donations will benefit the Lost Boys & Girls of Sudan, not only those living in the United States, but also those still living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. This can help bring young boys and girls into the field of fine art to make them better artists for the future, but also it can afford these people a new creative avenue from which to express and explore visually the inner truth of their experiences. It allows them a way to understand their loss as young children because of the violence of genocide, the struggle to survive against all odds, and the challenge of moving beyond the stagnation of the camps.

Now there are three art-training centers in the Camp. But the students are facing difficulties since they don't have enough art training materials such as drawing books, paint and even pencils. You cannot imagine how minimal conditions of life are in these camps. The support that I may get from you will help very much the refugees. For many it is the difference between a chance to express themselves and the dead-end life of the camp.

Small things can cause people to see the world differently and entry into the world of art which has the real potential to change lives, as for example, it has changed my own. I hope you would consider us, and I will me most grateful for any aid you can grant those of us who depend upon your generosity. I have included the following list of items that represent the kinds of help we need.

Materials and Tools

10 tubes of acrylic colors 500ml: 8 primary colors and two of black and white
10 tubes of oil colors 200ml: 8 primary colors and two of black and white.
3 sacks of brushes each contain 12 brushes
Sketchbooks of whatever kind
Watercolor pencils
Prism color pencils
Logograph pencils
Some plastic eraser

With the above materials and tools they will be able to practice their drawing and painting skills and become socially activated through group projects designed to promote artistic talent through cooperation and the mutual sharing of ides. This leads, of course, to the development of new techniques and the mastering of a variety of styles. Of course, this will draw the students step by step to higher levels of proficiency.

To be honest, right now the real question is how to find the support since there are so many willing and gifted artists. It is my hope that somebody likes you will be in a position to do aid us.

So much has happened to us in the South Sudan and particularly those of us called the "Lost Boys," that in order to for us to preserve our identity we must build communal experiences through storytelling, the education of the community and the visual expression of our past. This provides communal and morale support through sharing experiences of refugee life, maintaining open lines of communication, and no less important, facilitating of the resettlement of communities of Lost Boys. These ongoing connections are at the heart of what art means to the refugees of the South Sudan.

Please write your check to Lost Boys & Girls association of Utah and mail it to: Lost Boys & Girls association of Utah. 2051 S State St, Provo, Utah 84606

ARAC members are ethnically and nationally diverse artists ranging in age from sixteen to thirty. All are, or have been, Kakuma camp residents. Some remain in the camps; others who have had the fortune of being resettled reside in various American states.

The refugee experience is unique to this group. The purpose is to bear witness, heal, and renew. Artistic expressions provides both a means of processing past and present events as well as build communal experience through storytelling, education of the community through a common language, and lastly, provides a way to be financially self-sufficient in desperate situations of Kakuma. The physical and spiritual situation within the camp has traditionally posed obstacles to artist organizing.

Best wishes

Atem Thuc Aleu
Project Director
African Refugee Artists Club And Youth Development
Website

Image Gallery 1
Image Gallery 2
Image Gallery 3
Article: Shadowed by Adversity: The Journey of the Lost Boys of Sudan - Eagle's Eye, Volume XXXV, Number 1, April 2004
The Lost Boys of Sudan: The Hidden Holocaust - UVSC Woodbury Museum Press

Curriculum

History Revisited: Colonization, War, Genocide and Hope in the Sudan by Leon Z. Gbee, McNair Research Program.

Publication

A short history of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, "Education is My Mother and my Father," by David Chanoff, reprinted from The American Scholar Vol 74, Number 4, Autumn 2005 with permission of the author.