Review

Art

Climate

Culture

Migration

27 December 2023

9 min read

Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration

Personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations. Jonathan Evens reviews Shezad Dawood’s multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A bronze sculpture of a small boat and sea monster tossed in the waves.

Where do we go now?, Shezad Dawood.

Photo: Finnbarr Webster.

Artistic banners are hung high above the nave of a cathedral between pillars and arches.

Labanoff Cycle banners hang in Salisbury Cathedral.

Labanoff Cycle banners depict found objects from the sea bed.

a dark stone modern carved stone font reflects the banners and roof of a cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral's font reflects the Labanoff Cycle banners.

The obverse of the Where do we go now? sculpture.

Hung in the central aisle of Salisbury Cathedral and reflected in the still water of William Pye’s cruciform font are a series of textile paintings by Shezad Dawood depicting objects recovered from the seabed of the Mediterranean.

Led by Professor Cristina Cattaneo, a team of forensic anthropologists from the Laboratory of Anthropological Forensics (LABANOF at the University of Milan go out with UN rescue teams when ships have sunk or capsized on the journey to Lampedusa and recover the objects and artifacts (as well as human remains). They do so, to create an archive whereby relatives can track missing family members. Unlike wars and natural disasters, there is no established protocol to deal with immigration deaths but, by its interventions, LABANOF is helping to potentially bring a protocol into being.

As seen at Salisbury, Dawood’s Labanof Cycle ranges from a pinch of earth wrapped in a twist of cling film to a passport and a faded photograph. Each of these textile paintings document a life and a journey in tribute both to lives lost and those that were saved.

Dawood became aware of the work of LABANOF through an article in the New York Times and reached out to them while preparing for an exhibition to coincide with the 57th Venice Biennale. As a result, he met with Cattaneo in Milan and she generously gave access to the archive. Dawood recalls:

“It was a shock to actually be confronted with those objects and be in the room with them. I really wrestled with whether it was appropriate to make work in response to those materials. One of the things that decided it for me, when I went away and sat with it, those objects made all of those lives so apparent to me and that was the shock. It transformed refugees and migrants from a statistical basis to something very human. The fact that I was crying looking at the material was what was important in bringing the humanity back to our fellow humans. There’s something very sad, and almost industrial, about viewing our fellows through the prism of statistics and othering them or demonising them as somehow threatening.”

Kenneth Padley, Canon Treasurer and Chair of the Cathedral’s Arts Advisory makes connections between these works and the themes and stories of Advent and Christmas, saying:

“This exhibition is a timely reminder, amid the anticipation and excitement of Advent and Christmas, that Jesus and his family were refugees and were being persecuted.” In these seasons, we recall the vulnerability of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, forced by political order to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and then by fear of King Herod from Bethlehem to Egypt."

“None of us straightforwardly belong anywhere, however long our forebears have sojourned there, and none of us abide long on this earth”.

Sam Wells

Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has noted that we are all “strangers and pilgrims on earth”, and that “God is the one who comes to us like one unknown” being “in the world, but the world received him not”. He suggests that it is by the way we receive this challenge, that “the Christian community demonstrates who we realise we are and who we believe God is”.

More than this, he argues that the Bible itself is founded on six journeys, all of which have a bearing on themes of migration: “Jacob and his entourage migrate to Egypt in the midst of famine. This is an economic migration, but really it’s a journey of survival. Moses and the children of Israel migrate from Egypt to the Promised Land. They leave as refugees to flee slavery. They take 40 years to reach their destination, and, when they get there, they face a very hostile environment indeed. Judah loses a battle and is displaced 500 miles to Babylon. There, as Daniel shows, exiles play a vibrant role in public life, and bring unique qualities, represented by the ability to interpret dreams. Jesus travels from Galilee to Jerusalem. He’s living during the occupation by an invading power, Rome. Finally, Paul migrates from Jerusalem to Rome. He’s searching for legal protection in an empire where citizenship transcends geography.”

His conclusion is that “most of what we’d today call migration is in the Bible, and it’s through migration, not in spite of it, that revelation occurs”. As a result, we don’t get Judaism or Christianity without migration. He adds that “the greatest migration of all is of Christ from heaven to earth and back” and the statement that “Here we have no abiding city” “is an announcement that we should consider our whole lives as a season of migration, because we are transiting through earth to find our true home elsewhere”. As a result, “None of us straightforwardly belong anywhere, however long our forebears have sojourned there, and none of us abide long on this earth”.

The exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral is a small part of a large body of work begun when Dawood was working on two separate projects; one which involved research about democracy, the other about the oceans. The title of the exhibition refers to Leviathan, a 1651 text by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes which takes the sea monster described in the Book of Job as a metaphor for the state.

“What’s been quite shocking has been that things people told me we might witness in 10-15 years, I’ve seen happen in five”.

Dawood’s Where do we go now? is a polychromatic painted sculpture, depicting sailors in a small boat encountering a whale, that is inspired by engravings and illustrations from Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, a 1704 pamphlet on the nature of legitimate government that was written in response to Hobbes. The whale represents the State, which threatens to destroy the vessel, prompting the sailors to throw a barrel (or ‘tub’) representing their labour (or ‘capital’) overboard to distract it. With figures representing refugees and a UN rescue worker in Dawood’s sculpture being placed within the Cathedral’s 1215 Magna Carta exhibition space, this work prompts visitors to consider the legacy of Magna Carta and the rights and freedoms of refugees.

Dawood has said that the exhibition is “an exciting opportunity to bring some of the key questions I’ve been asking of climate, migration and our shared humanity … at a time when a renewed sense of sharing and purpose is urgently needed.” In the light of such thinking, Beth Hughes, Salisbury Cathedral’s Visual Arts Curator, suggests that,

“Shezad’s exhibition is a powerful reminder of how we are all connected to each other, and to the natural world … [focusing] the mind to help us think about how we might be part of the solution, to make a better world for ourselves, our loved ones and all of humanity.”

Much of Dawood’s work is concerned with “world-building” and “imagineering”, something that developed from a “youthful love of science fiction, speculative fiction” which he found to be “a really useful space for philosophical dialogue and imagination”. Then, as “confidence and practice grew, I found through conversations with other artists, writers, academics, that we could have these conversations and start to imagine possible or plausible futures as a way to reflect on some of the issues of our time”.

One result has been the Leviathan Cycle, a ten-part film series exploring unexpected narratives that connect the most urgent issues of our times: climate change, migration, and mental health. When he began, he experienced surprise or disbelief at what he was trying to do “which was to imagine the world in 20-50 years’ time” in order to highlight the urgency, “because it felt like we didn’t have much time in which to change course”. He was primarily “thinking about what the immediate fault lines were and how they could deepen and darken in our lifetimes or just beyond”. As he started going out talking to scientists, particularly those working around climate, “there was something quite interesting about this 20-50 year’ timeframe, because their predictions were in that range”. However, “what’s been quite shocking has been that things people told me we might witness in 10-15 years, I’ve seen happen in five”.

How can we find new reserves of empathy and understanding for the difficult circumstances we are going through in our world?”

The Cycle follows the journeys of a cast of characters who are the survivors of a cataclysmic solar event in order to reflect on the systemic crises within our biosphere and imagine where we might end up if we fail to gain a deeper understanding of the intersections between fields of knowledge and ways of living, across and between human and more-than-human ecologies. The first five films imagine a dystopian future while the latter five - of which the latest, Seven and Eight, are on show here – explore “ways to navigate and negotiate this future with each other, with our government; ideally, a new social compact that’s not just human but extends beyond the human”.

Episode 7: Africana, Ken Bugul & Nemo, in the North Transept, takes the viewer on a journey through the Mangroves of Senegal which speaks of our interconnectedness where both science and the imaginary dovetail into a possible, collective future. Episode 8: Cris, Sandra, Papa & Yasmine, in Trinity Chapel, charts an embodied, spiritual, and ecological journey along an age-old Guarani path linking the Brazilian Atlantic Forest to the sea.

The wider Leviathan project from which the work on show in the Cathedral is taken, is the culmination of conversations Dawood has had with a wide range of marine biologists, oceanographers, political scientists, neurologists, and trauma specialists. This approach is typical of his practice, which often involves collaborations with groups and individuals from different disciplines that are transformed into expressive artworks.

The Leviathan Cycle itself has become a large community of scientists and collaborators around the world. The collaborative experience has broadened Dawood’s horizons in terms of how he thinks of the subjects of his work: “It’s not just a protagonist in a film or an artefact, it’s each of these scientists’ individual area of study that they’ve devoted a huge part of life and time to, and so it creates this huge web of obligation. It’s part of empathy and reciprocity, it’s how we work with others and try to do our best.”

As a result, he says: “There’s a debt to generations beyond us. They only stretch us just a little but we become better human beings by doing so. I think it’s also important to go beyond the human as well and stretch our empathy to include the non-human – animals, plants, algae – they’re all systems of which we are part and which we interconnect with in surprising ways. It’s something that I’ve become more actively aware of through this body of work. It just feels pivotal.”

His hope “is that the exhibition encourages visitors to think about ourselves as one humanity”: “My engagement with the topics of climate change and migration are driven by wanting to see a new set of ethical standards established for the world. How can we find new reserves of empathy and understanding for the difficult circumstances we are going through in our world?”

As we come to the end of 2023 and think about the coming new year and further into the future, the beauty of this exhibition and of Dawood’s work is that, as Beth Hughes notes, it “draws you in to explore some of the big questions facing humanity today”. World events in 2023 “have shown us how important it is to care for displaced people and the importance of looking after our natural world”. Kenneth Padley says, “The overriding message is a call to action before it is too late”, which is why the exhibition is prefaced with a verse from St Paul’s letter to the Romans that simply states, “Live in harmony with one another”.

Leviathan, An exhibition by Shezad Dawood at Salisbury Cathedral, 28 November 2023 – 3 February 2024.

Review

Culture

Music

Politics

25 July 2025

6 min read

As the congregation gathers Bruce Springsteen leans hard into hope

Chords of confrontation and communion

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

Bruce Springsteen crouches down and holds a hand out to a sea of outstretched hands

Springsteen plays Manchester.

Brucespringsteen.net.

I finally got to experience a Bruce Springsteen concert recently. Which is to say, for three hours, I touched a land of hope and dreams.

We walked along a canal to get to the arena – my husband, my father-in-law, and me –Manchester shimmered with the arrival of summer, and light bounced off red brick and still water. We neared the arena and the air felt dense with anticipation. T Between us we carried heartbreaks, elections, hopes, failures, and a collective return to music that had accompanied and clarified it all. We were drawn by loyalty and nostalgia and joy, but also I sensed by a hope that Bruce would meet the moment — the frayed, furious, anxious now — with something that mattered.

We found our seats and gripped our drinks as the lights dimmed. Thousands of people stopped individual conversations, and hushed, and then joined voices into a deep and reverent chant. “Bruuuuuuuce”. To my right, the glow of a screen, the woman holding it sending a text – “yes babe, 1pm, lovely” – and it seemed incongruent and true. In the tension before the release, in the dark before the light, we hold our breath even as the ordinary carries on. The ordinary carries on even as the world fractures and glows. The ordinary is what Bruce often sings of, it is one reason why fans feel heard and seen by him. That night though, all the ordinaries he sang of formed something extraordinary.

Then there was light, and Bruce walked slowly from the side to the front of the stage, his guitar suspended across his body, his face a relaxed, broad smile, his bandmates and companions beside and behind him. Then there was music. No videos, no pyrotechnics; just old songs that felt as if they existed for the now. My City of Ruins, Death to My Hometown, Land of Hope and Dreams, The Promised Land. The song Long Walk Home was introduced as a “prayer to my country”. It is a country that he embodies, despairs of, and loves. He sings of his home with fury, sorrow, tenderness, and love.

Riffs and rhythms that were decades old were being made urgent again. Springsteen’s music holds both grit and glory, and hard-won joys leave space for sorrow. I write this and lines by Mary Oliver come to mind: “We shake with joy, we shake with grief / what a time they have these two / housed as they are in the same body.” What a time they had, joy and grief, that night with Bruce.

The evening unfolded not as spectacle but as liturgy; all of us involved in something like devotion – in part to Bruce, but also to moral clarity, to the power of poetry, to the promise of who we could be. At times the crowd seemed silent, ushered into something deeper – not entertainment or escapism, but something like confrontation and communion. We were being offered the joy of music and memory, but also an opportunity to reckon with who we are.

Between songs, Bruce spoke. He apparently rarely does so in his gigs. His voice slowed and deepened – not chit chat, not to entertain, but to bear witness and stand defiant and call us to the best versions of ourselves. “I’ve spent my life singing about where we’ve succeeded and come up short in pursuit of our civic values,” he said. “I just felt that was my job.” He proceeded to describe how those values are being torn apart, and why they matter. The crowd roared. He was making civic values shine, speaking about them with urgency. He acknowledged both the dream and the failure, but still he believes in the promised land and he asks us to as well. Before he belted out Rainmaker, he said, “when conditions in a country are right for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up.” He spoke of America, and really of the world – what it is, what it is becoming. His honesty and poetic rage situated us, then became a map for how to keep going.

We can be glad to be alive even while we are honest about sorrow, injustice, broken politics, fractured families, and tired hearts.

I found myself wondering: why is it that Bruce can sing and speak about justice, warped politics, and who we are becoming, and be met with cheers, while so many churches avoid doing so, preferring instead to whisper in neutral tones while the world burns? That night, I stood in a crowd of thousands and I heard a kind of moral clarity that orientates the soul and made me cry. It wasn’t partisan, it was human. Why can it feel riskier to speak specifically and prophetically in a sermon than in a stadium? I wonder if it’s because Springsteen has always rooted his politics in people’s real lives – in work, family, grief, memory. He doesn’t gesture toward abstract ideologies for fear of alienating people, or in the hope of retaining fans: he tells stories and gives names to problems and injustices, singing about crooked institutions, boarded-up factories, buses that never come, lovers who don’t come back.

The evening felt, for me, like the kind of church I long for and sometimes touch: no tidy answers, no insincere lyrics, no vague calls for justice, but rather honesty and specificity and the chance to stand alongside strangers and feel something challenging, beautiful, true.

I scribbled a question as the music soared: can a chord be mystical? Because that’s how it felt. As if there are progressions – minor then major, dissonance into harmony – that can reach past language and speak directly to the part of us that longs for love more than cynicism, to the part of us that still dares to hope even when there is very little obvious reason to do so, to the part of us wondering how to be truly alive.

Near the end, Bruce quoted the American writer James Baldwin:

“In this world, there isn’t enough humanity as one would hope. But there’s enough.”

There’s enough. It was a small phrase but it hung in the air like incense. For Bruce, there is enough humanity to keep singing for, and about. Now, he seemed to ask the crowd, what will you do with that enoughness, with that humanity?

In the final stretch, Bruce leaned hard into hope with songs like The Rising and Born to Run. The energy in the room felt like resistance – not against something, but for something. He didn’t pretend everything’s fine, but he sang anyway. “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

We can be glad to be alive even while we are honest about sorrow, injustice, broken politics, fractured families, and tired hearts. Gladness is being asked to stand its ground now, and to do something with our improbable aliveness. For the final song, Bruce played Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom. It is a song about lightning and exiles and freedom, about the trembling of the soul and about a sky that “cracked its poems in naked wonder.” He sang it slowly, tenderly, like a prayer – which can also be a trembling of the soul, a song of naked wonder. Perhaps he prayed to God, perhaps to some other sacred thing: our better angels, or the fragile hope of who we might yet become.

In a BBC documentary about Bruce Springsteen’s history with the UK, someone says “there’s something in Bruce fans, you know you can implicitly trust them.” As we filed out of the arena, it felt like 25,000 of us briefly knew each other, trusted each other, could take on the world together. Perhaps we just had.

Soon it was just me, my husband, my father-in-law, and the silent dark canal as we walked back into the night. We were tired, we were awake. I thought of Bruce’s belief in the promised land, and of Baldwin’s line: there’s not enough humanity, but there’s enough. These are beliefs that can feel risky. So can belief in God. But enough is plenty. Enough can turn up the volume and let the spirit be our guide. With 25,000 other people, I’d turned that volume up and I could hear the spirit defiant, unifying, guiding. It is – has always been – time to go and sing of it, despite everything.