Photo exhibit documents Somali immigrant community

Pictures of the Somali community in Columbus, Ohio, at work, play and in between make up the new traveling photo exhibit entitled “The Somali Diaspora” and currently on display now through August 7th at MAPP’s Coffee & Tea (1810 Riverside Ave.) located on Minneapolis’ West Bank. The photos, like “Going Home” pictured above, were all taken by Somali immigrant Abdi Roble.

“Somali people are the classical American story. People migrate and you try to get close to people who are like you, but also to assimilate in the host community,” says photographer Abdi Roble, whose “The Somali Diaspora” documents his community during what he calls an important time of transition, still rooted to their own culture while struggling to establish themselves here.

Solidly centered in photojournalism, Roble’s black and white photographs pierce what he calls “the thin wall” separating Minnesota’s fastest-growing immigrant population from the rest of us. Everyday life reveals both cultural differences and commonalities, with an often meditative beauty. In a recent KFAI interview Roble challenged misconceptions that hound Somali people both here and in his home city, Columbus, Ohio (where the pictures were taken).

Somali people are Sunni Muslims, more open to modernity than the conservative Shir’a Muslims. Somali people were nomads, producing a sense of collective responsibility for one another that is part of creating their entrepreneurship here.

“When you lose a job in this country, you don’t know what to do. You can end up in a shelter. But in the Somali community, you’ll be taken in,” Roble observes. “In Somali community you are responsible for everyone. It comes out of that tradition of nomadic life.”

That sense of mutual aid was critical for the Somali people’s survival after the civil war that toppled their government in 1991. In the wake of mass torture and murder by warlords, Somalis were forced to flee to refugee camps, sometimes for a decade. Some children, like the beautiful Batala, an 8-year-old-girl whose portrait opens the exhibit, spent their entire lives in such camps before coming to the United States. Even the refugee camps weren’t safe from violence—everyone lost family members and many women were raped.

“A refugee camp is no picnic in the park. It’s dry, dirty, hostile. Not safe. That’s why when refugees come here they take advantage of every opportunity available,” explains Tariq Tarey, an African-American project manager with Jewish Family Services in Columbus who supported Roble’s traveling exhibit and helps Somali refugees relocate. “The cultural differences captured in this photo exhibit are important because in 50 years the Somalis will be average American Joes. Currently they still have their ritual culture. Go to their stores and barber shops and engage with these people. They have stories to tell.”

One series is set in those small businesses. Like Depression-era photographic giants or TC photographer Stephen Dahl’s “Working,” they are as much tributes to labor as to Somali ingenuity: the kitchen of a Somali restaurant; a tailor with Western and traditional Somali clothes hanging overhead; a music store; a shop window advertising phone cards with a Western-dressed Somali store owner using a calculator on one side and a hajab (robed) woman on the other. Like all immigrants before them, the Somalis support their businesses, a cultural value undermined by the Wal-Martization dominating American communities.

Arts Midwest brought Roble’s photographs to Minneapolis. Describing their goal, Sussy Bielak says, “We foster cross-cultural connections and awareness though the arts. The United States is changing, not only its cities but small towns too.” (for more info: www.artsmidwest.org (612)341-0755 x21)

They are planning a tour, World Fest, to visit nine Midwestern small towns in November and featuring four international music ensembles (inlcudinge one Somali group).

Text by Doug Ruttledge eloquently tells stories of the people pictured: from Somalis forced to move after being attacked by hostile neighbors to the hospitality that infuses every Somali home. Like Roble, Ruttledge says the purpose of the exhibit is not only to introduce Somali people to Americans, but to themselves as well.

“Somalis have an oral history and laws based in oral tradition, explained through parables,” Ruttledge says. “Derios, an elder, teacher and artist told me, ‘In Somali we say, “If you have lost your way, look back.” The Somali Documentary Project will be for elders to look back, and it will give the younger generation a basis for looking forward.”

A series of wedding photographs, boys swimming in a pool, male and female students at a Quoran school, women cooking at a stove or choosing earrings in a store, show familiar parallels across cultures. Abdi Roble applies his fine art to reveal our newest neighbors to us. One leaves this exhibit with the warmth of being welcomed to a Somali table and offered a cool drink of their beloved mango juice on a hot day.

FREE Through August 7, 8 a.m. -10 p.m., MAPP’s Coffee & Tea, 1810 Riverside Ave., West Bank, Minneapolis. To hear An interview with Abdi Robel and others in this story, tune in to “Catalyst,” Tues. July 26, 11 a.m., KFAI Radio, 90.3 FM Mpls. 106.7 FM St Paul. Archived for two weeks after broadcast at www.kfai.org