For refugee week, this exhibition by Lab Ky Mo brings together two portrait-based projects on migration into the UK. ‘Displaced in Calais’ features photographs taken while the photographer was embedded with charities working with migrants living in harsh conditions near Calais. ‘Displaced in Essex’ presents pen portraits, taken from police-released photos, of the 39 Vietnamese migrants who tragically died in a lorry. Juxtaposed, the works humanise migrants and explore contrasting fates, highlighting this deeply polarising issue in UK politics. 

ESSEX

“ESSEX” is a series of pen portraits of the 39 Vietnamese trafficked migrants who died in the trailer of an articulated lorry in Essex 2019. They exist collectively and usually anonymously, most often unnamed and rarely pictured. These pen portraits are drawn from police-released photographs. Every drawing is a modest meditation on their lives, as well as – of course – their indescribably tragic deaths, as I attempt in some small measure to humanise the victims. For the duration of the drawing, for me, they live again… albeit briefly. And for me, they are no longer anonymous – they have a face, some semblance of character, a history – albeit brief – and an existence.

MEDYKA

“MEDYKA” is a series of portraits of Ukrainians, at the crossing point on the Polish border where they escape their war-ravaged home country and officially become war refugees in a foreign land. In March 2022, one month after Russia attacked Ukraine, I travelled to Medyka and Przemysl – border towns between Poland and Ukraine. I stationed myself by the border gate and catalogued the stream of war refugees fleeing hostilities in Ukraine. They were nearly all exclusively women and children, with a handful of old men. As they were travelling on foot, very few of them carried more than a couple of bags. All of them left fathers and husbands behind, uncertain as to when they might be reunited again, if ever. Every single broken family unsure if they would ever see their war-torn homes again.

CALAIS

“CALAIS” is a series of portraits of refugees collected in Calais, awaiting small boats to take them on the dangerous journey across the English Channel to the UK, where they hope to become asylum-seekers. These refugees predominantly come from Africa, Afghanistan, Syria, India and Vietnam. They travel across Europe to the sea border of France where they await in the woods in tents, living off the many humanitarian charities that provide for them. By taking their portraits, I was struck by their personalities, their optimism, their dreams. Unfortunately, these vibrant faces cannot be shown in public as any photographic record of these refugees in a country other than England could nullify their asylum application – the UK government requires refugees to claim asylum in the “first safe country”. In all probability, most of the men in these portraits are now in England, having risked – and survived – a perilous journey in a small boat across the Channel.