Majicman Notes

There is a tendency to think that displaced persons should count their blessings or be grateful for having reached new shores, for having been received as refugees or immigrants.

Hagos’s images invite viewers to sit within the space of loss and grief and dislocation. It is a space in which to consider the homes that were left and lost. And to remember that to lose a home is also to lose the daily routines and habits enacted in that home, the routes travelled to and from that home, with all the conversations and encounters that tether a person to their identity.

His work reminds me that to lose a home is like stepping to the edge of a vast sea that feels unchartable. Sometimes what we see as choice is another person’s only option.

ENUMA OKORO on journey painting by Tewodros Hagos

FT