MY REFUGE, NOT MY HOME /Nolias Gallery 201 Liverpool Road N1 1LX Islington

An installation of digital images, sound and objects
by Crina Boros 

Pestalozzi International Village is an educational charity trust. It was founded in Trogen, Switzerland after the Second World War, by a group of rich philanthropists, helping the children orphaned by the conflict to continue their education. The organisation took the name of Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi         (1746 – 1827), an educationalist and philosopher who transformed his house into an academic camp for orphans, and who believed in educating the whole person: the Heart, Head and Hands. The trust was established in Sedlescombe, East Sussex, in South of England in 1957. Back then, the students selected to benefit from the trust’s academic offer were as young as nine or ten years old. They left their families and came to live at the Village, receive British education and be selected later by high regarded UK and US universities. Today, Pestalozzi International Village has partially changed its agenda. They offer a two-year scholarship for the International Baccalaureate Diploma to underprivileged students from Asia and Africa. Pestalozzi’s collaboration with Tibetan communities all over the world has been unbroken ever since the trust was set up.

The first institution to officially represent the Tibetan Community in Britain was founded in September 1970 – The Tibetan Association - although Tibetans have been welcomed or invited to the UK earlier, after the Chinese communist regime took over Tibet in 1949-1950. One of these organisations is Pestalozzi International Village from Sussex, who first offered academic support to Tibetan children in 1963. In exile, Tibetans have found freedom: freedom of speech, of religion, of education and employment. But their heart is always longing for Tibet. Today, there are about 500 Tibetans in Great Britain.

The project is based on discussions with students from the Pestalozzi International Village in Sedlescombe, and members of the Tibetan community who have chosen London as a refuge. The exhibition will be an installation of projections and sound and will features interviews with individuals, documenting their feelings about refuge and perceptions of the notion of home, identity and sense of belonging. My Refuge, Not My Home is an attempt to discover the unreported side of an exiled person’s world and the transformations that follow the loss of the physical connection with their homeland.