((PKG)) WHEN I WAS 7 – SYRIAN GIRL MURAL
((Banner: When I was 7))
((Reporter/Camera: Shahzad Khokhar))
((Adapted by: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: Minnesota, Minneapolis))
((PHIL HANSEN, ARTIST))
The name of this project is “When I was 7.” It all came about when I ran into Bana ((Courtesy: Bana Alabed Twitter)) and her story and hearing about her and the Syrian war and her experience in Aleppo, and then trying to relate that to my own life experience. And I could not relate to that in any way, shape or form.
((Courtesy: Bana Alabed Twitter))
Stand with Aleppo.
((PHIL HANSEN, ARTIST))
I wanted to try to find a way to understand not just the war, but understand that moment of being seven years old and how different that can be for everybody, depending on their life experience, where they are in the world and what their life happens to entail.
So, I asked people to share a story with me about when they were seven years old. A memory, some sort of experience that they went through. Then I hand wrote all those stories to create the picture.
I worked on it, kind of, piece meal throughout the year as I was hearing more stories, collecting more stories from the people.
I’ve actually never met Bana, never spoken to her. I didn’t even reach out because this project was about viewing her and her life from afar, and so it’s really about creating that experience of having the distance and being able to try to view somebody from that distance.
The message of this art work is that it’s very easy to get lost in our day to day. It’s very easy to get lost in the modern world. To see our experience and always be looking at the future and to, maybe, not pay so much attention to those around us.
For anyone in Syria who happens to see this project, as an American artist, I can’t even comprehend what they’re going through, what they’re experiencing. But I think, well, hopefully they understand that were seeing what they’re going through, that we are trying to understand it, and hopefully all of that adds up to a collective whole, where there’s some sort of understanding and action.
((ANIMATION W/ GFX, CAPTIONS, PHOTOS))
((Banner: Bana and her family are now living safely in Turkey. She has written a book, Dear World))
