Prague, Feb 1 (CTK) – The experience of refugees smuggled in the confined space of containers can be shared by visitors to a new interactive exhibition with the “Fear of the Unknown” motto that was opened in the NTK Gallery in the National Technical Library in Prague on Wednesday.
Apart from a container, made by Lukas Houdek, the exhibition will offer some 30 exhibits by 27 Czech as well as foreign artists dealing with the migrant crisis.
The exhibition, similar to one held in Bratislava last year, focuses on Central and East Europe.
“Even more than refugees’ feelings upon their arrival in our country, it deals with the Czech and Slovak society’s approach to them,” curator Lenka Kukurova said.
“We are trying to make the known from the unknown and mediate the experience with refugees for people,” she said.
The exhibition entry is free. The event, co-organised by the Goethe Institute in Prague, runs through March 31.
Kukurova said the exhibition previously met with a great acclaim in Slovakia.
The artists presenting their works are no experts in the migrant issue, but they expressed their subjective feelings and opinions, thus leading a dialogue with the audiences’ opinions, she said.
Programmes for the public, schoolchildren and refugees will accompany the exhibition, staged in cooperation with NGOs and foreign partners.
The first one will be a February 2 workshop for teachers with the motto “How to speak of refugees.”
The Czech Republic is one of the EU countries with the lowest number of asylum applicants. The EU’s average of asylum seekers is 702 per one million inhabitants, while the number is 25 times lower in the Czech Republic – 28 applicants per one million inhabitants, in the past couple of years.
In the third quarter of 2016, most of the EU asylum seekers were people from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
