Seeing Stars: Beyond The Naked Eye

SEEING STARS: Beyond The Naked Eye

‘Seeing Stars: Beyond The Naked Eye’ was developed as part of the Leeds University Library Galleries ‘Welcoming Migrants’ strand of community outreach, to create a deeper and layered engagement with local refugees and migrants.

Sessions were facilitated by The Highrise Project CIC, responding to key themes in the Seeing Stars exhibition, by exploring art, science, philosophy, fantasy, and history through the lens of experimental photography. Each session focused on different aspects of photography, including photomontage, portraiture, light, movement, cyanotype, and projection.

The workshops incorporated an English language element, allowing participants to engage in language learning alongside the creative activities. Talking points within the sessions centred around personal and cultural understandings of space, offering an insight into the ways in which discourse around the topic permeates societies.

Space seems empty and cold but it is full of vivid and beautiful things.

Some are man-made, some are celestial.

I remember as a child, my grandfather used to say that man never went to the moon. But on a night I would go out to the garden and create a rocket out of chairs to travel to space in my imagination.

In the beginning, the earth had no form.

It was only a void.

It is the dream of humanity to inhabit other planets.

The Islamic calendar follows the cycles of the moon. Ramadan is the ninth month and starts the day after the new moon is seen in the sky. It is very thin, we call it Hilel [crescent moon].

The beginning of Ramadan is determined by a moon sighting committee in Saudi Arabia, but now there is also technology to calculate it.

At night I look up at the constellations in the sky and meditate.

Some people think there are multiple dimensions and there is a different version of us in each one.

They call them parallel universes.

The first dog who was sent into space must have felt so alone in the darkness, far from Earth. I am 3000 km away from home.

Sometimes I feel like that dog.

The Highrise Project CIC is run by visual artists Louise Atkinson and Victoria Kortekaas and uses ethnographic and creative research to co-produce artworks with participants.

Their creative projects aim to reduce social isolation by enabling people to experience and upskill in artistic and digital techniques, and empowering them to tell their own stories.

We would like to thank all the participants: Hassan Al Khoder, Afnan Aqili, Fatima Boufas, Ehsan Chamsorak, Eman Elzayat, Rohangiz Hoseyni, Faiza Ghanay, Saidhassan Jafar, Parinaz Sayyad Mosleh, Anna Pazera, Gulin Kesenel, Sibel Kaya, Sinan Kaya, Olukayode, Deniz Akkaya Ozdemir, Janet Poveda, Rahman Taha, and Iza Sobieranska-Kulasek.

Thank you also to Nelson Rodriguez for supporting the sessions, Dawn Smallwood for providing the ESOL resources, and Hondartza Fraga, Layla Bloom, and Laura Wilson for inviting us to be part of the exhibition.