The exhibition’s evocative title is inspired by a local belief from the southeastern coast of Turkey. According to this story, doves sing, “Oh my neighbour, oh oleaster tree, once we were trees, now we are birds”. This poetic transformation provides a framework for explorations of belonging, rootlessness and the search for new beginnings in unfamiliar landscapes.

Presented as a series of posters, the exhibition offers insights into the varying connotations and dynamics an image can evoke across different communities, contexts, and individual trajectories.

Let us consider a photo taken by the seaside on a summer day. A person looks into the camera with a slight smile on the face. For many viewers, this image might conjure happy holiday memories and a longing for summer. But imagine the same photo, taken on the westernmost coast of Turkey – Greece is visible across the sea, and the person is an Afghan migrant. The azure water turns into an insurmountable border. The smiling person becomes a displaced individual, stranded on one side of the sea, unable to claim the right to cross to the other shore. Now, let us look at the photo again. Can we see the sorrow of the waves that have swallowed thousands of lives? Do we feel the deep blue sea’s oppressive weight?

First established as a tool of mass print and later a popular decorative element, the poster has a unique relationship with time. As a political device, its lifespan is as long as that of the protest it promotes. As a visual memory, it captures a fleeting moment – be it the cover of a favourite album, the announcement of a theatre premiere, or an exhibition. Once removed from the streets and placed indoors on a domestic wall, a poster encapsulates and preserves a fragment of time and place, taking on personal meaning.

A peer-curated group show featuring nearly fifty current and former Martin Roth-Initiative fellows from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, India, Iran, Morocco, Montenegro, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Russia, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda, and Ukraine, among others, Once We Were Trees, Now We Are Birds presents visual artworks from a range of disciplines spanning performance, poetry, and photography.

The birds sing about the journeys of those compelled to exist in transit, about home as both a rooted place and a fragile, precarious land. But is that the geography of the land*, or the geography of the mind?

“Geography is destiny.” – Ibn Khaldun