Linda Stein’s “Displacement Art”

The artist calls her series a meditation on “the tidbits of life” that make us who we are, and what happens when we have to flee.

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Linda Stein knows first-hand about being uprooted from her home by violence.

“I was displaced from my lower Manhattan apartment for eight months following the attacks of September 11,” the New York City-based artist tells me. “While I know that this is inconsequential compared to what people are dealing with in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Central America, it nonetheless prompted me to think differently and more deeply about the issue.”

What do people who are forced to leave their homes take with them, Stein wondered. What do they leave behind? How do they feel about the objects they abandon?

These considerations led Stein to initiate a series of sculptures and collages she calls, Displacement from Home: What to Leave, What to Take—Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets.

“I try to imagine the knock on the door and being told that I have only minutes to pack,” she says. “What do you put in a valise? What do you put in your pockets? What do you hold in your hands, especially if you know that you can’t take photos because pictures will be a clear give-away that you are trying to flee if you are stopped by the authorities?”

She explains, “I want people to look at each piece and feel empathy, compassion, for the person who has been displaced.”

The series could not be more timely.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 65.6 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to war, violence, persecution, and environmental and economic instability. And the numbers keep growing, with approximately 30 people a minute—one every two seconds—being driven from their homes by forces beyond their control.

Steins’ s Displacement from Home features stacked wooden cabinets, open wicker baskets, and overflowing suitcases exhibiting items that she imagines people hold onto—a seashell, a ribbon, a game, a spoon, a piece of jewelry—and what must be relinquished. There are tall bureaus with tiny drawers and small shelves, each one carefully presenting a cherished object. Other drawers, half-open and messy, are filled to overflowing with the stuff of everyday life—condoms, metal screws, coins, a teapot.

Each of Stein’s pieces is both a mundane and heartbreaking reminder of what it means to run for your life. As the artist puts it, “They are a visceral and visual reminder that the narratives we hear are about people coming across the border, who can’t go back to their countries of origin, folks who must gather the strength to start again.”

These are not new themes for Stein.

“All of my work is about protection, otherness, and sanctuary,” Stein says, raising a concern that she considers fundamental to human survival: What does it take to turn someone from a bystander into an upstander, a person who defends the disenfranchised, the harassed, the belittled and persecuted?

Stein’s earlier projects include Knights, dozens of pieces of intricately designed wearable body armor that temporarily turn gallery-goers into androgynous “Knights of Protection” who are free from the constraints of gender expectations and gender boundaries. This theme is also explored in Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females. In this collection, Stein honored ten women who risked their lives to protect Jews and others who had been targeted for death during World War II.

“I am heartbroken over the Trump Administration’s immigration policies,” Stein says. Stein sees the series as a meditation on “the tidbits of life” that make us who we are, and hopes her art will raise consciousness and compel action. “Art can help people connect to emotions that they may not have had access to before.”

Stein expects Displacement from Home to travel—both Knights and Holocaust Heroes have been widely exhibited throughout the United States—and she anticipates debate and discussion with people who have experienced the realities that her work illustrates.

“I hope Displacement from Home will start conversations and encourage the meaningful exchange of ideas around asylum seekers, refugees, and immigration policy,” she concludes. “I also hope that it will encourage people to speak up in defense of others.”