Posted inArts & Entertainment

A view of refugees’ humanity: ‘Night Watch’ art installation to glide along the San Francisco Bay shoreline

For Catharine Clark, of San Francisco’s Catharine Clark Gallery, visual artist Shimon Attie’s “Night Watch” — a media arts installation featuring a large, high-resolution LED screen on a floating barge — was a “COVID proof” project to get behind. The film displayed on the barge’s 20-foot-wide screen focuses on 12 refugees from five continents. As Clark explained, some of the refugees featured in these “video portraits” identify as LGBTQIA+; others are under 18; all have their own particular stories and reasons for fleeing their countries. However, the film itself is silent: Each individual walks from the background to the foreground and pauses, and then the next one appears.