Festival 2023

I Had a Dream

Organised by The Open Museum (Glasgow Museums community outreach team) in collaboration with Iman Tajik 

4 November 2023

The Burrell Collection, Glasgow

This event is open to the public

To Absent Friends is an opportunity to revive lost traditions and create new ways of remembering those who have been lost.

As part of this year’s festival, artist Iman Tajik will screen “I had a Dream” which references the many lost and unrecorded deaths at borders, especially at sea, from migrants and refugees arriving through treacherous sea journeys, in search of a better life to another land many miles from their own, and more increasingly than ever, to UK shores.
Hands feature in several of Iman’s works with their powerful ambiguous meaning of waving, extending and welcoming or help and drowning. Today, Iman invites people of all ages to participate in the launch of a new project by contributing a handprint in clay to the “wall”.

Iman Tajik is an Iranian artist and photographer based in Glasgow. Through photography, sculpture, installation and performance he “performs the border”, inspired by personal experiences of crossing geographical borders and socio-political barriers to insist on the right to freedom of movement. You can visit his website here.

The Burrell Collection has several artworks and objects which engage with historical moments of migration, including the painting “The Refugees”, attributed to Honoré Daumier.

Illustration credit: The Open Museum