"Discarded life jackets on a beach in Greece inspired artwork by a teenager who wanted to learn more about the refugee crisis."
Achilleas Souras, the 17-year-old creator of the artwork, titled SOS: Save Our Souls, hopes his project prompts others to learn as well.Souras was 15 and living in Barcelona when the flood of refugees from places that include the Middle East and Africa landed on the beaches of Lesbos, Greece, and created a humanitarian crisis.The idea for the project came to him after he learned about the crisis in school.Souras reached out to the mayor of Lesbos, the first stop for thousands of seaborne migrants who undertook their desperate voyage in the Aegean Sea. The island’s beaches were littered with debris from their journeys.“It culminated in me reaching out to get actual life jackets,” Souras recalled. The mayor of Lesbos responded.Souras said the vests still had the smell of the sea. “When I touched them, I realized that every one of these life jackets represented a human life. He used the vests to build igloo-shaped enclosures modeled on the temporary homes indigenous peoples build of snow and ice in the far north.The installation struck a chord, and Souras has been invited by museums, design fairs and refugee organizations to show his work around the world.
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| An igloo made of life vests exhibited at Maritime Museum |
Achilleas Souras creating his art installation, in Spain.
SOS(Save Our Souls) by Achilleas Souras is exhibited at the Moroso showroom in Milan, Italy.
Rendering by Achilleas Souras about how he imagines the igloo could be used for humanitarian purposes to house refugees.
''Cyprian students' amazing art project ''Immigrants''
The artwork depicting desperate refugees figures in a small boat, some of them fearful holding their children, others’ expression is showing their agony as they are trying to escape from the horrors of the war, seeking a new country for a better future.
A Kolossi high school art project, which poignantly highlights the dangers faced by refugees trying to get into Europe, has been shortlisted from more than 22,000 entries in 54 counties for a major prize offered by the London-based Saatchi gallery.
The installation, called Immigrants, depicts life-like figures of drowning adults and children, which have been made of expanding foam, and arranged on an old fishing boat donated by the Kolossi community council.
The project is the brainchild of eight students, aged between 16 and 18, of the Apostolos Loucas district lyceum in Kolossi, who were supervised by their art teacher, painter Popi Nicolaou.
Students teacher said that they chose the specific theme because of the refugee crisis, and the impact that pictures all the drowning refugees in the Mediterranean had on them, especially the drowning children. The students want to raise awareness of this issue.
