A collection of vibrantly colored paintings hung on the white brick walls of a packed Hintonburg studio on Nov. 21. On one canvas, bombs fall from helicopters into a red sea and on another, eight people are stranded in a sinking boat.
All the art was created by refugees living in camps and housing communities in Greece. The paintings traveled to Ottawa with Love Without Borders, a not-for-profit organization that empowers displaced persons by providing them with a creative outlet to express themselves.
Kayra Martinez, the founder of the art show, said the art shows have helped hundreds of refugees, primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, both by raising funds and by spreading awareness of the conditions in which they live. She also said a hundred percent of the proceeds from each painting sold returns to the artist, most going towards food and other necessities.
Love Without Borders began three years ago when Martinez gave the children paper and crayons to draw in Nea Kavala, a refugee camp in northern Greece. She added for the first time as a volunteer, she saw how happy and relaxed they were and drawing helped the children work out their feelings of trauma.
“In the beginning . . . the drawings were really deep. They were really dark,” Martinez said. “They were drawing the Aegean sea in red and stick figures upside down, and all this coming from a six-year-old.”
Martinez said she realized art is a powerful way for refugees to tell their stories and to share what they have lived through. Today, Love Without Borders provides volunteer-run art workshops to displaced youth and adults in Greece, some of whom were artists before fleeing their war-torn countries.
Martinez sends the artists pictures of their paintings displayed in countries from Germany to the United States. She does this, she said, because it inspires them to realize they’re important.
“(Refugees) are human beings,” she said. “They need to be valued and this is a really wonderful way to value their presence and their art.”
Since 2016, Love Without Borders has sold close to one thousand paintings in cities across Europe, Asia and North America. The sold-out art show case in Ottawa marks the organization’s forty-fifth event.
“It’s been about awareness; not always about the art,” Martinez said. “There’s 70 thousand displaced refugees that are in Greece and a lot of people don’t know about that.”
Before Love Without Borders, Martinez was a flight attendant based in Frankfurt, Germany. At the time, the city was receiving thousands of refugees and said she simply asked how she could help . From there, she said she grew this organization.
Martinez added she hoped to inspire others to create change in their communities.
“Whether it’s in Greece or whether it’s local, everybody can do something and change the world in a small, creative way,” Martinez said.