Art can uniquely tell the stories of migration in a way that politics cannot. In this poignant Look Again book, writer Ismail Einashe examines works from Britain’s national collection of art and offers an exploration of themes of migration and belonging – and the plight of finding shelter in a foreign land. Embarking on dangerous journeys to flee violence and persecution, migrants and refugees arrive on the shores of Britain to seek help and hope. And yet, there they become scapegoats, vilified by anti-immigrant rhetoric. Examining the work of artists like Tania Bruguera, Arshile Gorky and Mona Hatoum, Look Again: Strangers challenges this narrative. It sidesteps the dehumanising language in political depictions of migrants, offering a deeper insight into the struggles and humanity of these strangers.

Ismail Einashe is a British-Somali journalist and writer whose work on migration and refugee issues has won multiple awards, including a 2019 Migration Media Award. He has written for numerous publications, including The Guardian, BBC News, Foreign Policy, NPR, The Nation, The Sunday Times, and ArtReview. In 2019, he won the Alicia Patterson Fellowship, America’s oldest journalism grant, for his year-long project examining China’s role in Africa. He is an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University. He co-edited the book ‘Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere,’ a collection of essays on the representations of migrants and refugees in the European media.

Griff Witte is the Democracy Editor for The Washington Post. He has previously served as the paper’s deputy foreign editor and as bureau chief in Berlin, London, Jerusalem, Islamabad and Kabul. Before returning to editing, he was a national correspondent, roaming the U.S. His award-winning reporting for The Post has taken him to more than 30 countries, where he has covered wars, elections, uprisings, revolutions, disasters both natural and man-made, and everyday life. Before joining The Post, Witte was a reporter for the Miami Herald. He also served as the researcher for Steve Coll’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Ghost Wars.” He has taught classes on foreign correspondence at Georgetown and Princeton.

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