Looking at the Sea through Barbed Wire: Visual Representations of the Jewish Refugees in Detention Camps in Cyprus

The paper aims to analyze the visual representations of Jewish refugees interned in British Detention Camps in Cyprus in the second half of the mid-40s. I juxtapose works of various media such as documentary photographs, drawings, graphics, and handmade artifacts which were created by refugees themselves during their stay in camps. Referring to the iconological methods of art history and theories of visual culture studies I examine how the analyzed images illustrate the formation of a new Jewish-Israeli identity in collective and individual terms.
The research focuses on European Jews who were Survivors of the Holocaust and aimed to immigrate to the Pre-Palestine. Due to the limitations imposed by the British authorities, many of them were turned back and settled in Detention Camps in Cyprus where they were waiting to receive permission to travel to Palestine. During that time some detainees were involved in a semi-artistic activity. The art classes were organized in camps by the Rutenberg Seminar and were taught by artists from the Bezalel School of Art and Crafts in Jerusalem. Art objects created in the workshops reveal particular iconographic motifs. Among them worth mentioning is the image of a refugee looking at the sea through the barbed wire. The juxtaposition of works created by pupils of the seminars with documentary photographs depicting life in camps in Cyprus serves as a unique study of visual representation of the process of self-definition of individuals and collective a part of a new nation.