A great artist on migration and refugees – the creation of Issam Kourbaj's 'Precarious Passage'

On the 20th of March this year we launched Issam Kourbaj's new book Dark Water, Burning World in the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery. 

Together we had chosen the place carefully – in the midst of objects that speak to the history of nature and humankind, and to the beginning of modern science, rational research, systematic collecting, global trade and Empire.

In our conversation we wanted to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Syrian uprising, which began on the 15th March 2011, and which has led to more than 14 million people being displaced, either inside their country or by fleeing elsewhere – the biggest refugee crisis of our time. 

The book, conceived as a perpetual calendar, takes its title from one work: little boats the artist started creating in 2016. They are made of bicycle mudguards, spent matches and clear resin – small and fragile, they render the predicament of humans seeking refuge with evocative force. A small flotilla of these boats was acquired by the British Museum and is currently on display in the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World, and has also been shown across the UK in a touring exhibition.

Issam Kourbaj (b. 1963) was born in Suweida in southwestern Syria and has lived in Cambridge since 1990. With a background in fine art, architecture and theatre design, he trained first at the Institute of Fine Arts in Damascus, then at the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in present-day St Petersburg, and the Wimbledon School of Art in London.

Dark Water, Burning World (2016) was made to will the public not to forget the innumerable numbers of people who have been fleeing Syria since the start of the conflict over a decade ago.

In December 2020, during a rerun of Neil MacGregor's famous British Museum / BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects, originally produced ten years earlier, the boats were chosen as the 101st object.

Just before we began our conversation in the Enlightenment Gallery in March 2023, Issam had placed some of the little boats on plinths and tables around the room so the audience could see them while we were speaking. And one of them he had placed right in front of us on a pedestal.

In the middle of our conversation the artist pulled out a copy of A History of the World in 100 Objects and put it on the pedestal. It was marked by a severe intervention: he had bored a big round hole into it. One could suddenly see through the 700 pages that covered two million years of human development. The heat of the drilling had left traces of burning on the elegant turquoise cover. Issam took the small boat that had been sitting between us and the audience and delicately placed it inside the hole so that it now seemed to literally traverse the history of humankind which is – just like the history of the universe, of the planet, of nature, plants,  and animals – a history of migration. In front of all of us, he, with this short and simple performance, had created a new work, Precarious Passage.

The book is a small object, but it addresses two million years of development. The boat is a small object, but it evokes a central force of humankind. One traversing the other, they open up an immense space of references and meaning. And at the same time they speak to the predicament and challenges of the present: political upheaval, climate change, poverty, migration.

Refugee Week celebrates the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Its vision is for refugees and asylum seekers to be able to live safely within inclusive and resilient communities, where they can continue to make a valuable contribution.

See Precarious Passage on display in Room 2 of the Museum – Collecting the world – on your next visit.