Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary at Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College hosts a culminating exhibition for Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary, a project connecting the arts to historic and contemporary stories of refuge. Over the past year, the project brought together book artists and members of Philadelphia’s Iraqi and Syrian refugee communities to create artists’ books that amplify personal narratives of displacement, immigration, and sanctuary.

Resettled Syrians and Iraqis, now living in Philadelphia, developed printing, binding, and artistic techniques through a series of project workshops where they wrote, designed, edited, and published their own books.