Canterbury Cathedral is in Suspended Animation: Refugee exhibition.
Arabella Dorman’s ‘Suspended’ clothes of Syrians, in the nave of Caterbury Cathedral, is an unexpected and inescapable reckoning. A sanctuary. usually comforting reflective, contorted and brooding. Hushed reflection upon politics and power. Candles lit for those in transit and not oneself.
The angles of the clothes are jarring. Suspended in positions that suggest their previous occupants simply dissolved. Was that man waving moments before? That child kicking out?
These clothes are more relatable horrors than a crown of thorns. A collection of heads tilt upwards. Christ bleeds in the corner, forgotten. Driven into the wilderness once more.
Abraham. Jacob. Moses. Joseph. Jesus.The Bible is told through the stories of refugees. We look upon the garments of the persecuted. Averting eyes, disengaging from the exhibit, thinking in numbers instead of with nouns. None of this possible in an eleventh century setting. Christ imploring on high, in silence. Testaments of our capabilities all around.
Those tiny trainers, that dreary dress, the defiantly perky pyjamas. Reverend Nick Papadopulos maintains, “the story never ends with suffering and exile; discarded grave clothes in the tomb told the disciples that Jesus had risen, these clothes must enlarge our hearts, instil us with compassion to respond.”
View of entire clothing collection from Syrian refugees and the nave of Canterbury Cathedral.
In January 2018, Teresa May agreed to pay France £44.5m to continue
policing the Calais border, thus preventing refugees from crossing
the channel to get to Britain.
Syrian refugees’ clothes are suspended by wire in Canterbury Cathedral's nave.
