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The Weisman Art Museum (WAM) presents Stories from the Somali Diaspora: Photographs by Abdi Roble, an exhibition featuring photographs by acclaimed Somali-born photographer Abdi Roble. The exhibition opens June 20 and runs through September 27, 2009. The Weisman invites the community to a free Family Day Celebration related to the exhibition on Saturday, June 20 (see sidebar, right).
Since 2003, Roble has documented the forced dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Somalis from their traditional homeland. This displacement dates to Somalia's political and economic disintegration in the early 1990s as warlords battled for supremacy. The crisis continues today as new fighting displaces thousands of civilians every year.
This exhibition's black-and-white images document the transition of Somali communities from Africa to the United States. The show includes photographs taken in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Columbus, Ohio; and Portland, Maine-home to three of the largest Somali communities in the U.S. Several photographs trace one family’s journey from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to their arrival in California and subsequent resettlement in Maine. The exhibition's images depict a range of subjects from women carrying sacks of grain in Africa to men pushing shopping carts in California.
Roble says he wants to capture the experience of a people torn from their homeland with virtually no belongings, and that it is important to record the experiences of refugees before memories fade and stories are forgotten.
"As a documentarian, one thing I can contribute is an archive where generations to come can look back and see who they were," Roble says. "If you have no record, you have no history. Another objective is to educate the hosting community. People in host communities have neighbors who came from Somalia. We hope people will get to know each other and talk to each other."
This exhibition was organized by the Columbus Museum of Art and Arts Midwest in partnership with the Ohio Arts Council. It premiered at the Columbus Museum of Art in 2007 and traveled to the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine in the winter of 2009. After its run at the Weisman, the exhibition will travel to the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, N.D.
WAM curator Diane Mullin says Minneapolis is a natural stop on the show's tour, since some of the exhibition's images originated here. "Roble is documenting the migration of Somalis into American cities, including Minneapolis," she said.
Abdi Roble was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1964. He was a professional soccer player for most of his adult life in Somalia. Political turmoil and a stagnant economy compelled Roble to emigrate from Somalia to the United States in 1989. He took up residence in Columbus, Ohio.
When Roble discovered a camera at a Coumbus flea market, he was inspired to become a photographer. By 1994, he was a freelance photographer for the Columbus Dispatch and the Columbus Post. Shortly thereafter, his photographs appeared in Leica View magazine and he went to work at Midwest Photo Exchange. In 2003, he founded the Somali Documentary Project with Doug Rutledge, Tariq Tarey, and Stanley Kayne. The Project's mission is to use photography to produce an archival record of the members of the Somali Diaspora while they are still engaging in the cultural practices of their homeland. He is also the author, with writer Doug Rutledge, of the book The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away (University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
"I never dreamed of becoming a photographer when I was a little boy," Roble says. "I was twenty-eight when I became a photographer. I have not done anything else since then--nothing, day in and day out. That camera has taken me places beyond my dreams. Photography has been a way for me to discuss what I want to discuss: social justice, activism, meeting people and getting into their lives. Every time you click that shutter, it's the past. You're confronting what's coming."
For more information about the Somali Documentary Project, see www.somaliproject.org.
This exhibition is organized by the Columbus Museum of Art and Arts Midwest, in partnership with the Ohio Arts Council. Ongoing support provided by the Columbus Foundation, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council.
The Weisman's presentation of this exhibition is made possible with the generous support of
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