About ten years ago, after a trip in the Middle East, I made a painting of a large corrugated iron serving as a wall for a shelter that I had spotted on the hillside.  Nothing else, except on the upper corner was a small red prayer rug,  a tiny square, a vivid spot of trust, of humanity, on the rusty and rickety sheet of insecurity. 

A few times, along my artistic activities, I have worked among people whose voice speaks and yet is not heard, whose needs are imperative and yet are neglected, whose existence is eminently threatened and yet it does not matter. They were labeled pupils in suburbs, illiterate, migrants, children of migrants, women in jails, sick persons. Any thing that make them sound like monsters.

Any monster which any of us could be if we were reduced to the label we are given. 

But we are not.

We, all the people.

However, I am still painting this small red piece of trust in my mind. Since too long now, I wonder what I could do to help alleviating the situation of these persons who had to leave everything they were and had in their homeland and who need the most basic follow up for their healthcare. Being an asylum seeker implies that every aspect of life must be considered from scratch, thus from a vulnerable position. Without a drug as common for us as paracetamol, high fever from a mild illness can kill a child. To mitigate these persons' fragility, to help them to continue their personal endeavor,  requires healthcare, the urgent one, the first steps and cares that save life. This very specific responsibility is between our hands. Because this people's hands are merely emptied during this critical situation in which they are going through.

Whilst the flow of informations feeds us every day, will we be labeled as ignorant, unconcerned, self-centered? 

Catherine Aubelle, April 12th 2020.