Paria Goodarzi and Francisco Llinás Casas: Amber (2021)
Amber was an interactive performance documenting a 23-mile walk from Dungavel Detention Centre to the Home Office in Glasgow. This work was commissioned by Scottish Refugee Council to mark the 70th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, the international treaty that upholds the right to seek refugee protection and the legal obligations of states to provide for people seeking asylum.
Amber responds to the different paths people seeking safety might take in their migratory journeys and the difficulty of judging their need for protection based on the way they arrive to UK shores. The performance was restaged a year later for presentation at Edinburgh International Festival.
Paria Goodarzi is a visual artist and social art practitioner, member of UNESCO RILA Affiliated Artist network, and the Young Academy of Scotland. Paria studied BA Textile Design at the University of Science & Culture in Tehran, Sculpture & Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art, and a Masters in Adult Education, Community Development, & Youth Work at Glasgow University.
Her work focuses on cultural and political transfers, translocations, and ideas of the contemporary human condition, cultural identity, and displacement. Paria examines the processes of formation, and representation of identity through a multidisciplinary practice that often takes the form of collaborative, participatory and socially engaged artworks. As part of her community and socially engaged art practice, she targets a broad audience of diverse social backgrounds and ages, responding to ideas around identity and representation. Exploring social and political issues through participatory and collective engagement and creative thinking with the aim to make a positive impact on the long-term wellbeing and visibility of minority groups to promote integration and diversity.
Francisco Llinás Casas is an artist and researcher focused on the Venezuelan migration through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing on literature, aesthetics and digital culture to reveal transnational ties within the diaspora. He’s currently a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh and a fellow artist at University of Glasgow’s UNESCO Chair Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts.
Casas and Goodarzi are co-founders of Distanced Assemblage, an artist-led initiative working in collaboration with diasporic and migrant communities.
Commissioned by Scottish Refugee Council for Refugee Festival Scotland 2021 and as part of the Cross Borders programme
“With AMBER, we wanted to make a radical artistic expression that could engage with personal aspects our stories of migration in a celebratory way and, simultaneously, protest against the current apprehension and reforms around the UK asylum system. (…)
Our performance responds to the different paths asylum seekers might take in their migratory journeys, commenting on the impossibility to judge their need for protection based on the way they arrive to our shores. (…)
We also want people to look at their reflection against the surrounding reality of the city and think about issues of our contemporary social experience such as discrimination, political upheaval and inequality. We will bring these issues into the street with our walk from one place to another, reminding ourselves how civilised life and humanity coexist with conflict and displacement.” Paria Goodarzi and Francisco Llinás Casas
Image credit: Paria Goodarzi and Francisco Llinás Casas, Amber (2021)