FREE
A shuttle bus will run between the Park & Ride lot to the west of the Brown Deer Road exit of I-43. For further information on free transportation options to Lynden, please contact us at info@lyndensculpturegarden.org or call 414-446-8794.
The HOME Refugee Steering Committee at the Lynden Sculpture Garden invites you to observe World Refugee Day in a series of outdoor events and programs that celebrate Milwaukee's refugee communities through art, food, fashion, and performance.
Bring a picnic--or pick up snacks from the Tables Across Borders booth, featuring community chefs--and enjoy the outdoors with friends, family, and community.
World Refugee Day at Lynden is organized as both a resource fair and a celebration of many cultures. In addition to making art, tasting food, and listening to stories, poems, and music, visitors will be able to gather information on local services for refugees. Stop in to sign up for a library card, to get a blood pressure reading or even a COVID vaccination, or to learn more about the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s Worker Connection Program. (Full list of resource fair participants below).
Under the big tent, you’ll find vendors from the HOME community and resource booths staffed by refugee-serving agencies and community-based organizations including Anthem Blue-Cross Blue-Shield; Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Division of Employment and Training, Worker Connection Program; Hmong American Friendship Association; Hanan Refugee Relief Group; Milwaukee Public Library; Community Center for Immigrants; Milwaukee Public Schools – Department of Bilingual Multicultural Education; Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition; Bloom For Growth; American Red Cross; Catholic Charities Milwaukee; Institute of World Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Essentially Empowered, Inc.; Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, and more.
Snacks and lunch food, including injera bites, samosas, pancakes, and bolani, will be provided by the chefs of Tables Across Borders: Abebech Jima (Ethiopia); Sar Kay Lah (Karen); Ifrah Yusuf (Somalia); and Wazhma Ahmadzai (Afghanistan). Please bring cash for donations.
All-day activities include batik dyeing with artist-in-residence Arianne King Comer (we will provide you with a T-shirt to dye and take home). In the gallery, we open HEALING COATS, an exhibition organized by Arianne King Comer featuring wearable art designed and made by refugee, immigrant, Black, and Indigenous artists, tailors, and community members.
The program will begin with a land acknowledgement with artist Valaria Tatera and a series of interfaith prayers organized by the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. As this is happening, Abebech Jima will be conducting a traditional and aromatic Ethiopian buna ceremony, roasting raw coffee beans and spices.
Hayat Pharmacy will be onsite from 11 am to 1 pm. Let Hayat Pharmacy keep you up to date with your COVID vaccinations and boosters, or stop in to check your blood pressure. Bring your CDC vaccination cards, insurance card, and ID if possible.
From noon until 1 pm, Claudia Orjuela and Julio Pabon take Lynden’s virtual Multilingual Story Time outdoors. They will be reading Señorita Mariposa by Ben Gundersheimer in Spanish and English as they connect Story Time’s theme of migration to Lynden’s gardens. Expect singing, monarch caterpillars, eggs, and milkweed seeds.
At 1:30 pm, artist-in-residence Chuck Stebelton assembles a group of poets, refugees, historically displaced people, and social justice advocates for a Poetry Walk. The group will share poems together in an open, multilingual conversational setting as they travel around Lynden’s grounds. Invited readers include past Wisconsin and Milwaukee poets laureate, translators, and artists with a practice of thinking and writing in poetic forms. Participants include: Alex Niemi (English, Ukrainian, Georgian); Franklin K.R. Cline (English);Brenda Cárdenas (English, Spanish); Inna Dmitrieva (Russian, English); Khatera Nazari (Afghan, English); Nada Azalloum (Arabic, English); Margaret “Peggy” Rozga (English); Ibrahima Fall (English, French, Wolof); Portia Cobb (English, Gullah); and Biluge Ntabala (English, Congolese).
We finish the day with Milwaukee’s hottest percussion ensemble, Samba da Vida. Pull out your dancing shoes and join them as they perform from 3-4 pm.
About Tables Across Borders
Coordinated by Kai Gardner Mishlove, Tables Across Borders is a global food collaboration highlighting local refugee chefs and the cuisines and cultures of refugee communities in Milwaukee.
About the Poetry Walk
On the occasion of World Refugee Day a group of poets, refugees, historically displaced people and social justice advocates will meet to walk and share poems together in an open, multilingual conversational setting. Invited readers include past Wisconsin and Milwaukee poets laureate, translators, and artists with a practice of thinking and writing in poetic forms. The walking format allows us to share poetry and conversation in a more open, intimate, and inviting atmosphere than a staged reading or podium allows.
Our walking route will include stops at three installations on the Lynden grounds. We begin with a set of readings outside Jenna Knapp’s Labyrinth, continue with a second set of readings in-the-round at Forrest Myer’s monumental Quartet, and will culminate in a visit to Folayemi Wilson’s Eliza's Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities. Lynden artist-in-residence Chuck Stebelton will lead the walk and host the conversation.
Haji Mohammad Essa Durrani was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has been teaching fine arts in Afghanistan for 50 years. He has eight sons and a daughter. His daughter Maryam Durani is one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World (2012), and she received the Four Freedoms Medal for Freedom of Speech (2014) and the International Peace Generation Award (2015). He will read in Dari, and his son Murtaza Durani will translate to English for him.
Ibrahima Fall was born in Senegal in the early 1990s and studied English at the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar. He left his home country Senegal for France to study linguistics at the Sorbonne University. In 2021, he and his wife moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he now lives and works. Fall speaks French, Wolof, and English.
Khatera Nazari is from Afghanistan. After the 2021 Taliban takeover, she and a small group of Afghan students fled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they study at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a lover of art and poetry as it connects with humanity's earliest civilizations and their developments. In Nazari's words, "I love reading poems and I love to discuss the varied situations that the writer asks the reader. It is a way that I can collect my thoughts about everything and everyone, including reflecting on my own self. Then I can try to be the best version of myself. Reading poems and studying art allows me to make this possible. I also love art because God is such a great artist.”
Nada Alzalloum is a displaced Palestinian born in Jordan and raised in America. She is the founder and creator of Bloom For Growth, a non-profit aimed at bringing awareness to refugees through art and research. She showcases her work at art shows and vending fairs where she speaks to people about the current refugee crisis. Nada also uses poetry as a means of expression. Her work as a Palestinian immigrant and daughter of refugees reflects empathy and personal experiences. She advocates for people to change inwardly so it may reflect on our world outwardly.
Alzalloum will also be selling artwork that showcases with intention beautiful representation of culture and people associated with the word refugee. In Alzalloum's words, "Usually when we hear 'refugee,’ we are presented with images or videos that show refugees in a very vulnerable state and this subconsciously makes people associate refugees with negative imagery. My artwork aims to replace those images in people’s minds with positivity and depth. It is also to show refugees a good representation of their culture and beauty so they won’t have to be constantly reminded of their trauma through those photos but instead remember the beauty of their homes and culture.”
Franklin K.R. Cline is the author of So What and The Beatles’ Second Album, both via Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. An enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, he is an educator in Kansas City, Missouri, where he lives with Six and Olivia.
Brenda Cárdenas’s books and chapbooks include Trace (forthcoming, Red Hen Press), Boomerang (Bilingual Press); Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors, with Roberto Harrison; Achiote Seeds/Semillas de achiote, with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, and Gabriela Erandi Rico; and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone. She also coedited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press). Cárdenas has served as Milwaukee’s poet laureate, taught for CantoMundo and Letras Latina’s Pintura : Palabra, A Project in Ekphrasis, and is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
Alex Niemi was born in California and grew up all over the United States. She has taught English in France and Russia, studied in Switzerland, and was a Russian lecturer for four years at the University of Iowa. She is now a freelancer and apprentice bookbinder at The Bindery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Alex’s poetry and translations have appeared in Columbia Journal, The Offing, Anomaly, Prelude, and other publications. She is the translator of The John Cage Experiences by Vincent Tholomé (Autumn Hill Books, 2020) and the author of the poetry chapbook Elephant (dancing girl press, 2020). Her latest book-length translation, For the Shrew by Anna Glazova, is forthcoming from Zephyr Press in 2022.
Margaret “Peggy” Rozga creates poetry from her ongoing concern for social justice issues. She was a participant in Milwaukee’s marches for fair housing and later married civil rights leader Father James Groppi. Her book, Two Hundred Nights and One Day (Benu Press 2009), tells the story of the 1967-68 Milwaukee fair housing struggle. Dr. Rozga is also the author of Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad (Benu Press 2012), and Justice Freedom Herbs (Word Tech Press). Her most recent book, Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems, looks at issues of women’s roles, western expansion, and race as they are woven through the life of Jessie Benton Frémont, usually identified in terms of her father, a powerful Missouri Senator and her husband, John Charles Frémont, best known as an explorer and 1856 Republican candidate for President. Rozga writes monthly columns for the Los Angeles Art News and Milwaukee Neighborhood News. She leads poetry and journaling workshops and serves as a civil rights consultant to community organizations.
Portia Cobb is an interdisciplinary artist deeply interested in telling stories that reflect the double-consciousness of African American history, identity, memory, and forced forgetting. Her body of work and research have joined these themes to short-form videos, photographic essays, field recordings, ephemeral installation, and performance. She is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres.
Biluge Ntabala was born in Congo and raised in Rwanda. She immigrated to the United States and attended Milwaukee’s High School of the Arts. She now holds a M.A. in International Affairs from Marquette University.
Inna Dmitrieva is an experimental filmmaker originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia. She holds a BA in Linguistics and Cross-Cultural Communication from the Saint Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and an MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In her moving-image practice, Dmitrieva combines elements of documentary, essay film, and abstraction to investigate the relationship between language, estranged individuals, and the spaces they inhabit or leave behind. Her past works include personal, autobiographical films as well as those that engage with a larger global community. She uses digital and analogue cinematography, as well as elements of stop-motion and 2D animation. Her films have screened at festivals and exhibitions both in the US and internationally. She is a current Mary L. Nohl Fellow.
Chuck Stebelton is author most recently of An Apostle Island (Oxeye Press, 2021). Previous poetry collections include The Platformist (Cultural Society, 2012) and Circulation Flowers (Tougher Disguises, 2005). He served as Literary Program Director at Woodland Pattern Book Center from 2005 to 2017. In 2018, he established Partly Press with an emphasis on well made poems-as-object and radically specific landscape poems. In 2021, he launched Ben Tinterstices Editions with a focus on collaborative print objects and ephemera. He has led workshops and field trips for non-profit arts organizations and conservancy groups at Natural Resources Foundation, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Woodland Pattern Book Center, Friends of Lorine Niedecker, and the Lynden Sculpture Garden. He is currently an ARTservancy artist-in-residence on the Milwaukee River Greenway and has held residencies at Lynden Sculpture Garden in 2011, 2014, and from 2018 to 2022 ongoing.
About Samba da Vida MKE
Samba da Vida MKE has been Milwaukee’s own Brazilian Samba school since 2010 and is part of the International Grooversity drumming network spearheaded by Marcus Santos (Grooversity.com). Samba Da Vida MKE (Afro-Brazilian percussion) brings together people of all ages to celebrate the Afro-Brazilian and Carnaval traditions of Salvador da Bahia, Rio, and São Paulo. Directed by Julio Pabón and Bony Plog-Benavides, SDV MKE is featured in parades and performances throughout greater Milwaukee and focuses on maintaining and promoting the rich musical culture of Brazil.
https://www.facebook.com/SambadaVidaMKE/
About HOME
HOME is the theme of our work with refugee community leaders, community members, Call & Response artists, and allies. The HOME Refugee Steering Committee is building a space of leading, coming together, and celebrating refugees.
The HOME 2022 celebration will continue with three more “days” featuring music, dance, and fashion (both ethnic and traditional), and two markets offering handicrafts and homemade goods. For all HOME 2022 programming, click here.
HOME 2022 is sponsored in part by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, Refugee Programs; Anthem Blue-Cross Blue-Shield; Hanan Refugee Relief Group; Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition; the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Our City of Nationals Conference at the Medical College of Wisconsin; the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation; Hayat Pharmacy; Islamic Society of Milwaukee; Milwaukee Public Library; the Community Center for Immigrants; and the Hmong American Women’s Association.
Additional partners include the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Worker Connection Program and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
