Edinburgh exhibition explores language, home and belonging
An exhibition at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is highlighting the experiences of refugees, migrants and local residents through paintings and drawings created during a series of workshops in Edinburgh.
Set in a brightly lit loft above George Street, the display is part of the RSE’s Curious festival and focuses on the theme of home and language. The artwork was produced through 20 workshops organised by Dr Min-Hsiu Liao, a professor of language at Heriot-Watt University, and the Edinburgh & Lothians Regional Equality Council (ELREC), with funding from the RSE.
Workshops brought people together across languages
Dr Liao said the project was designed to give participants space to create rather than be studied.
“I grew up in Taiwan, but have been living in Scotland for 23 years now,” Dr Liao remarks.
“My work is mainly about how languages move across cultures, but I also work with the local community and people who speak different languages.
“And I think it’s probably often underestimated how multilingual the city is.”
Languages represented in the workshops included Arabic, Cantonese, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, and Persian. Refugees and migrants from around the world joined multicultural Edinburgh residents to talk, draw and paint.
Dr Liao said the relaxed setting was important.
“I had all this academic thought about what I wanted to research, but I didn’t want to use them as research subjects,” Dr Liao says of her participation. “I want them to do things that they would [normally] do, rather than because I want to research that.
“We provide a nice environment; tea, coffee, refreshments, and people just come and we talk a bit. And then people just do whatever they want to do and we’ll provide different kinds of drawing materials depending on how skillful they are. They can draw with pencil on paper or watercolor on canvas.
“We just let the languages flow and people are not judged by their English ability or whatever. If people are talkative, we talk, and in some sessions nobody talks at all and that’s totally fine as well.”
Artwork reflects joy and frustration
Some of the pieces in the exhibition reflect pride and comfort in mother tongues and first languages, while others show the strain of communicating in English.
“Some paintings are very happy, they are expressing their happy feelings about mother languages,” she says. “A lot of them have to do with home and also castles.
“A castle is stable,” Dr Liao explains, “And that’s how people think about languages, their first languages.”
But the work also captures more difficult feelings.
“Several people drew a person being like a prisoner,” the linguist says. “That’s how people feel when they speak English.
“Those two participants I remember clearly didn’t speak English much, but they found a way to express feelings that they wouldn’t be able to explain verbally.”
Leith walk and everyday multilingualism
Dr Liao said one workshop included a long walk down Leith Walk, where the group discussed the many different shop signs they saw in the area.
“Everyone’s an expert because we all know different languages,” she says.
“Very often people come here, like myself, thinking that their English is not good enough.
“But it’s not just English. There’s so many other languages.
“After two hours walking on the street,” she recalls, “I remember a lovely Arabic-speaking girl saying that she did not realise that some of the signs were not in Eglish.
“She thought there were so many English words she didn’t understand. And now she understands that those were Japanese words or Mandarin words.”
Dr Liao said the workshops showed how much multilingual knowledge already exists in the city.
“Edinburgh is multicultural and everyone knows a bit of it,” Dr Liao adds. “And we, living here, we are part of it as well. We own the city and we know a part of the city nobody else knows.”
Festival runs through September 13
Dr Liao said language should be seen as central to daily life and to the way people connect with one another.
“I think language is such an important part of our life,” reflects Dr Liao.
“I mean, every moment we are talking, we’re using it, but some people don’t reflect so much about the languages we are using.
“I think the languages we use and the languages other people use are so important in our life. It’s just like, you cherish a book, you cherish language itself as well.”
The Curious festival is running between September 5 and September 13 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh on George Streetww.
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