Arar rosom arar elom: an exploration of arts-based method in fostering cultural identity and mental healing for Rohingya refugees

Arts-based research encompasses various inquiry methods to interpret and construct meaning from the lived experiences of both research/art participants involved in the study. This emerging academic field involves research methods, including photography, murals, creative writing, poetry, theatre performances, dance, body art, body mapping, digital storytelling, collages, filmmaking, etc. (Lenette 2019). Lenette (2019) suggests three broad arts-based methods–visual, literary, and performance–deployed in arts-based academic inquiry across disciplines alone or combined with conventional data collection methods like interviewing, etc. This research investigates the art production (pictorial-art-illustration) by Rohingya refugees residing in Bangladesh to express social resistance and assert their cultural identity. The utilisation of informal resistance serves the purpose of preserving their shared memory, transmitting historical knowledge through oral and visual means to subsequent generations, and conveying information about their identity to the world. This chapter explores the incorporation of artistic practices through the theoretical tools of ‘home,’ ‘space,’ and ‘identity’ to comprehend a) representation of lived experiences, b) retention of identity and cultural memory, and c) psychological healing by the Rohingya refugees in the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Considering the aforementioned perspective, this analysis delves into two arts-based projects implemented within the Rohingya refugee camps, i.e., the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC), AJAR’s (Asia Justice and Rights) quilt project, both of which involve the Rohingyas in a participatory mode of engagement. These two projects share a common methodology, i.e., participatory action research, and they collectively aim to facilitate the expression of voices and promote healing. Hence, relying on the secondary data from the project description and grey materials like project report and different briefings released by rights-based organisations regarding such arts-based initiatives as well as the primary data through the first author’s ethnographic engagement (participant observation and informal conversation) with some participants involved in these projects, this chapter explores the potential of arts-based projects in Rohingya refugee research and how these arts-based projects foster the refugees’ agency as knowledge holders.