Karl Addison Paints In Refugee Camp in Greece with Syrian Kids

May 8, 2017 Artists

If your house is destroyed and you are chased from your neighborhood by bombs, anything that recalls normalcy is welcomed. Street Artist Karl Addison tells us a recent project with two other artists where he hopes their painting gave residents a sense of hope for their future.

Karl Addison for aptART. Elpida, Thessaloniki, Greece. April 2017. (photo © Karl Addison)

Based in an abandoned textile factory in Thessaloniki, Greece, the individual tented rooms are in rows on large open floors with common areas created for kitchens and space for children to play. Outside in the parking lot Karl smashed the walls with an ocean of blues over the course of six days – something comforting and reassuring perhaps.

“We were creating the artwork with the objective to make the place feel more like a home than an old factory,” Karl says, and she says that he invited people to be a part of the process of art making “hoping to inspire or provide some sort of normalcy to their lives.”

Mostly families from Aleppo, Syria, many of these families were previously in other camps and “have been split up along the journey and/or the war from their homes,” he says.

Karl Addison for aptART. Elpida, Thessaloniki, Greece. April 2017. (photo © Karl Addison)

“I wanted to paint some of the kids from the home and only managed to do two portraits. For the rest of the canvas, we engaged the kids to put the theory of Abstract painting into practice. Inspiring them with contemporary painters like Rothko, Pollock & Cy Twombly. The movement and mark of paint becoming their expression.” An unusual exposure to 20^th century painting, no doubt, and one that some of the kids got to participate in as well.

The project is sponsored and organized by apART, an organization that brings arts into places like the Elpida Refugee Home. Karl would like to thank Sam from apART, as well as give a shout out to the two other artists who were working at the camp with him, Billy (*http://www.billycolours.com/), and David Shillinglaw (*http://davidshillinglaw.co.uk/).

Karl Addison for aptART. Elpida, Thessaloniki, Greece. April 2017. (photo © Karl Addison)

“I can only hope that during the time we were there, there was a difference made. If it’s a particular painting, phrase, or text from the beautiful artworks,” he says, his intention was to show “empathy for other humans in need – involvement through compassion.”