Dawit L. Petros is an artist, photographer, sculptor and muralist. Here, he talks to Huriy Ghirmai about how the journey of the exile impacts on his identity and the need for the exile to be the author of the narrative that describes his experience.
“I take very seriously the opportunity to articulate my own personal and cultural story within the current international and contemporary art context,” says Dawit L. Petros, an artist based in New York. “If we fail to register our individual and collective narratives, it will be written for us by others. History is rife with the implications.”
This statement is the principal basis for the Eritrean Diaspora Mapping Project which Dawit is currently putting together. The work is concerned with establishing a comprehensive map linking the locations around the globe where Eritreans live. The ultimate aim of the project is to create a large wall mural and a series of photographs and text based on the Eritrean diaspora experience.
The idea is, for participating individuals to first obtain a map of the city where they live. Once they do that, they then draw onto the map the daily route they take most frequently to travel from home to work, school etc. Finally, they are asked to get hold of a postcard of the city, state, province or region in which they currently live and on the back, write the route they travelled from Eritrea to where they now live, using only the names of city and country. If they were born outside of Eritrea, then they use the place of their birth as the starting point.
“The displacement of the Eritrean diaspora is both unique and general,” explains Dawit. “Global shifts of population to locations far from points of origin are not ours alone. It’s imperative to acknowledge the intersection of our own specific history with those of others and develop a framework from which to assess these narratives. The mapping project aims to put the Eritrean dispersal throughout the world into visual form.”
The project has a personal dimension as far as Dawit is concerned. The artist was born in Asmara in 1972 and two years later his family, along with baby Dawit, fled Eritrea and following a long journey through Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, arrived in the city of Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1980.
Dawit spent his formative years in Canada and following the first stages of schooling, he went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts in History at the University of Saskatchwan in 1996. He then continued his studies in Art, completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and a Master of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University (2007).
“There was not a precedent in my family or broader Eritrean community for being an artist and so it took me a long time to figure out how to proceed,” says Dawit. “And so my emergence into life as an artist is the sum of many experiences that I’ve had to stumble and experiment with. I’ve always been highly inquisitive in a way that few other disciplines could satisfy and so art provided a framework through which critical observations of the world could be constructively manifested.”
Since 2007, Dawit has been living and working in NYC where he is now officially represented by Alexander Gray Associates gallery. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States.
Currently, he is the Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, reputed as one of the premier international museums for the production and exhibition of works by artists of African descent.
“The residency is a year long program at the Studio Museum,” says Dawit. “For me, this is a unique opportunity to disseminate my work in a program that mixes exhibitions, education and public programming.”
Each year, the Studio Museum in Harlem offers a 12-month studio residency for three emerging artists. Each artist is granted a free non-living studio space, a fellowship, and a material stipend. Toward the end of the residency, an exhibition of the artist’s work is presented in the Museum’s galleries.
The Eritrean Diaspora Mapping Project is a huge commission in as much as it aims to engage Eritreans in the diaspora the world over. The project is related to the questions of cultural and personal memory. Although there’s scope to assume that the original birth place has a lot to do with who were are, the focus is not solely on that.
“Each place we’ve travelled through has had an impact on who we have become as an individual and as communities,” explains Dawit. “And so the project also insists that though our daily travels are intricately linked to a broader, historical context, these daily travels are establishing new narratives that are re-defining who we are as individuals within new contexts.
“In considering Eritreans who’ve made lives in disparate locations such as Australia, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Britain, to name just a few, I’ve always been keenly aware that it’s sheer circumstance, often beyond our control, that took us to our respective end points. The conditions that enabled a family friend to receive a student visa to Saskatoon, Canada, and not Norway, meant that my family located to Canada and not Norway.”
According to Dawit, a telling inspiration for the current work is firmly linked to this very reality. As such, the project is an artistic narrative that joins the various possibilities which shape the lives of individuals and families in the diaspora. In this respect, the work is a collaborative work which will allow diaspora Eritreans of various forms and shapes to take part both as creators and audiences of the ultimate art work.
“Art is by its very nature collaborative, it requires both artist and audience for an exchange, a conversation to occur,” Dawit says. “In the mapping project, the collaborative process is even more explicit. The information provided by participants – names of cities, countries and daily routes provided – will constitute the work itself. So without these contributions, the project will simply not be possible. Therefore, the participants will be both contributors to the work and the audience.”
History is full of accounts of important events and experiences with the noticeable absence of the subaltern. To a great extent, the dominant perception of history as something that can only be written by experts has perpetuated this trend. The voice of the ‘little people’ is often missing from the narrative that describes their experience – their history. Perhaps in this context, the Eritrean Diaspora Mapping Project can be seen as a corrective of the artistic kind which will restore the missing voices in a narrative that belongs to the people. In a way, it is about adding the people’s voice and making history more representative.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROJECT, PLEASE CLICK HERE
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NOTE FROM DAWIT PETROS: I kindly ask you to send your map and postcard together in the same envelope to Dawit L. Petros, C/O The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 W 125th St, New York, NY 10027, USA. Contact me should you require any additional information or if there are any questions that you may have. I graciously thank you for your participation and look forward to your contribution. All kind regards.
