"I'm not just a refugee"

The inspiration behind this tee for Bîstyek is breaking out of the box that society has placed refugees, including me, in. It is crucial for refugees to be treated more than war survivors. We are human beings, and our identities are beyond our displacement experiences. This is brought to you by the clear communication that we are more than just refugees written boldly on the life jacket print. The life jacket artwork is our symbol as refugees trying to cross the sea seeking safety and struggling to reach the safeguarded land.

"I burned this in Toronto"

The inspiration behind this tee is all the paintings that I burned in the streets of Toronto in 2022 to create a larger-than-life message to everyone that we refugees are bigger than the box that society has placed us in. The choice to burn the paintings was to transform the mediums into different ones centring around the ashes left behind. However, to ensure I got the public's attention by delivering the statement I was making, I had to let go of one of the most precious elements in myself and deal with a lifelong scare that would remind me of what happened every time my memory failed me too.

The statement is simply centred around the struggles we refugees have to face when we finally secure physical safety; we find ourselves welcomed by all the stereotypes that we have to break; I brawled to convince people that refugees can be anything, including creative designers and artists, and once I moved on from that, I was again finding myself fighting the expectation of what kind of art I can make; in addition to sharing my refugee experiences and the scars left behind, I have other sides of my story that needs to be put out. We, refugees, have so much to offer, whether within our displacement chapter in our stories or different chapters in our lives.

The front is shown in colour, but the back is done in black & white to represent the ashes that came from burning the paintings.