Under the Same Sky is a shared understanding that community doesn’t just happen, it is created, protected, and shaped through ongoing acts of courage, creativity and solidarity. The artists in this exhibition reflect on these acts, often starting from their own lived realities as migrants and cultural workers in the UK.
This exhibition is part of a wider project funded by the Community Recovery Fund from Birmingham City Council, developed in response to the racist riots that occurred in the summer of 2024. During that time, many migrant and refugee communities experienced heightened fear, tension, and isolation. In the wake of those events, Under the Same Sky seeks to create a space for healing, solidarity and connection. Through art, storytelling, and shared cultural expression, we aim to strengthen community cohesion between migrant and non-migrant groups, fostering dialogue, understanding, and care.
Responding to this year’s Refugee Week theme, “Community as a Superpower”, artists explore how connection, care and resilience emerge even in unfamiliar and difficult terrain. Presented through photography, analogue film, painting, archival materials and experimental techniques, Under the Same Sky invites us into deeply personal narratives that speak to broader realities of migration, identity, and belonging.
Featuring work from Artur Zerkalov, Martin Avotiņš, Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak, Femi Amogunla, Violetta Brandys, Helena Sõõro, and Lucy Sadova. Across all the works, viewers are invited to consider four curatorial themes: vulnerability and resilience, unfamiliar territories, solidarity and togetherness, and life in a foreign land. These thematic threads run through the exhibition like constellations in a shared sky, distinct yet connected.
Artworks and Artists
For Estonian artist Helena Sõõro, community takes the form of song, as she documents the Estonian Mixed Choir of the UK preparing for the iconic Song and Dance Celebration in Tallinn. Her cyanotype prints, echoing the Estonian flag, capture the joyful labour of rehearsals and the emotional bonds forged across distance and generations.
Femi Amogunla brings us a powerful portrait of collective resilience in Nigeria, where disabled people excluded from the early COVID-19 vaccine rollout created their own networks of care. His work speaks to how solidarity, in the face of systemic neglect, becomes an act of survival.
Polish artist Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak presents The Myth of the Polish Mother, a photo series that interrogates the inherited ideals placed upon women. Her use of lace as a visual metaphor explores the tension between beauty and constraint, intimacy and invisibility, tradition and transformation.
Ukrainian artist Artur Zerkalov, a member of the Odessa regional branch of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, uses surrealist oil painting to express his personal experience of displacement. His work reflects the profound loneliness of being a refugee, surrounded by people, yet feeling like a stranger, navigating life in a new land that is both the cradle of civilization and a place of unfamiliarity.
Latvian born, Birmingham based artist Martin Avotiņš bridges past and present through a framed page from the early Latvian diaspora press alongside a silver gelatin print marking his own migration journey. His work reflects on memory, transition, and the objects we carry to make sense of belonging.
Polish artist Wioletta Brandys explores the emotional landscapes of migration, memory, and healing through intuitive painting and storytelling. Her practice is deeply rooted in nature and personal history, drawing inspiration from her own journey and the legacy of her great-grandfather, who emigrated to the United States during the Big Wave of Immigration and later lost everything to political erasure.
Ukrainian artist Lucy Sadova uses symbolic figurative painting to explore identity and displacement. Inspired by Slavic rag dolls and Ukrainian embroidery, her work expresses the emotional split of living abroad, caught between grief, hope, and the desire to remain rooted while adapting to a new home.
Photo by Martin Avotiņš