The Global Refugee Mural

"The Global Refugee Mural tells the stories of three refugees who live in Maryland, whom I conducted interviews with in order to design this mural. I was inspired to do this project after working with refugees at a refugee resettlement center run by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, who I partnered with for this project. The mural deals with the human rights abuses in each of the three refugees' homelands as well as celebrating the culture and traditions there.

"The first section of the mural tells the story of Georges, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who was once the mayor of his city. When a violent rebel group attacked his region, he took his family and escaped to a refugee camp in Kenya, and eventually came to the US. The second section shows the story of Mai, a refugee from Myanmar, formerly Burma. When the repressive government discovered that she had visited a Christian church group in the US, she and her family were persecuted and she was unable to return to her country. The third refugee, Taameem, is a woman from the south of Iraq. Her brother, a young and educated man with progressive and democratic ideals, was murdered by a local fundamentalist militia group several years ago. She was targeted by the group as well, and escaped and came to the US as a refugee."

- artist Joel Bergner -