Return of the Soul

  • Source: List.co.uk
  • Date: 5 August 2008
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Scottish artist Jane Frere portrays the unrest in the Middle East through the creation of thousands of figures held in limbo.

More: Art, Art Festival, edfest.tv, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh Festivals, Jane Frere, Return of the Soul, The Nakbah Project, Video

Comments

1. Rosie H, Scotland – 10 August 2008, 1:16pmReport

To say that I saw this installation in Edinburgh yesterday does not begin to describe its impact and the depth of feeling when standing in its presence. Seeing is just the beginning of an emotional and spiritual experience of what it means to lose your home.
I experienced The Return of the Soul as a wave of humanity in distress, each person telling a story: the story of each figure, the story of each person who made each figure, the story of each person who told the story to each person who made each figure. And there are 3,000 figures, each embodying its story, undulating in space, suspended in time and as applicable now as then after 60 years.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown was as the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday, and I would like to have taken him by the hand and led him into the Patriot Hall Gallery to stand beneath, in front of and among the river of tragic figures looking for brief refuge, believing their displacement was only temporary. I would have liked to own, with him, Britain's responsibility for this ongoing tragedy and for its immediate resolution.
With heartfelt appreciation of the work that Jane Frere and her colleagues and supporters in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan have created and in hope that it will be shared widely.

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