Najma Abukar: Everyday Hope (2023) 

Everyday Hope is a series of photographic portraits by artist Najma Abukar, accompanied by conversations with eight people who have lived experience of forced displacement and who are now settled in Scotland.  

The exhibition and project brought together people who have migrated from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Eritrea and Ukraine, and interwove their voices from different generations and backgrounds. People who arrived in Scotland very recently, and people who settled here some 20 years ago.  

Abukar shared conversation with participants about their personal life experiences, family, community, war, peace building and survival. Most of all, they talked about hope. Hope for themselves, hope for community, for future generations, collective hope and hope for the everyday. The struggle to hold onto hope in impossible circumstances, but also the very real need to have hope.  

Najma Abukar is a Somalian-born photographer who has resettled in Scotland. Her work documents cultural and gender identities, the African diaspora, and immigrant experiences. Being a first-generation migrant woman of African heritage, her photographic body of work focuses on the strife and resilience of the Other. Najma’s practice is concerned with issues of identity, belonging and (self) representation within the Scottish landscape.  

Commissioned by Scottish Refugee Council for Refugee Festival Scotland 2023 and as part of the Cross Borders programme

Supported by Civic House  

Presented at Civic House (Glasgow) 

Image credit: Najma Abukar, Untitled (2023). C-print. From the series Everyday Hope