Bamiyarra – Connecting young Hazara refugees with their homelands

Bamiyarra is a multi-media storytelling project that engages and connects young Hazara from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne with their homelands and separated communities all over the world – just as the name, Bamiyarra, joins the Bamiyan province in Afghanistan with Melbourne’s Yarra River. Young Hazara worked with Melbourne artists and filmmakers to tell their stories and explore their identities through creative forms, producing micro-documentaries, photo essays, video installations and an exhibition. We developed a brand identity and exhibition concept for the project. It drew upon the distinctive and multi-generational Hazara textile patterns and colours. We carried this through to the exhibition concept, where we stacked cardboard boxes together, and used them as frames for photographs and portraits.

Photography by Andrew Garton, Farkhonda Akbar, Muzafar Ali