Massive art installation in Winnipeg uses thousands of shoes from refugees to shed light on their plight

A Winnipeg-born artist says he hopes a colossal installationwill serve as a reminder to Canadians about the struggles of refugee children, who often flee to safety with nothing else but their shoes.

The Travel Safe Project art installation was unveiled Wednesday in Winnipeg's Odeon Park, outside of the Burton Cummings Theatre.

Theexhibit which is 2 storeys high uses more than 3,000 discarded shoes obtained from refugees and displaced peoples in 25 different countries to depict the body ofAlan Kurdi, a two-year-old Syrian boy who washed up on Turkish shores almost a decade ago.

Photos showing the boy's lifeless body face-down in the sand, wearing a red T-shirt and blue shorts, werewidely shared in 2015, putting a spotlight on the plight of Syrians making the perilous journey to safety amid war in their home country.

Darcy Ataman, the artist behind the project, spent time in both Syria and Turkey through his work as founder of Make Music Matter, a charity that offers music programs for people experiencing trauma, including victims of war.

"I was talking with some young people that just illegally, you know, fled across the border from Syria into Turkey as refugees," Atamansaid. "One of the gentlemen just stopped me in the middle of conversation and said,'No, you don't understand. We know you've been seeing the images every day for last three years on TV. We know no one's coming to save us and why.'"

The conversation "just made you realize they're not leaving because they're having a good time," he said. "Throughno fault of their own, [they]had to flee and restart their lives."

Monique Burke, who worksin the settlement sector, reached out to multiple organizations supporting refugeesto find the shoes used in the piece.

'Running for their lives'

"As a mother, I have a toddler around the same age as Alan, so that strikes me immediately," she said. "But also being in education, I work with refugee students. Ihear stories from them and their parents about what they've gone through. So it connects with me on that level, too."

Atamanalso went to refugee camps he's been at as part of his humanitarian work,exchanging people's old shoes with new ones.

"When people flee, all they have is their shoes. They're literally running for their lives and they can't come back. And that's all they have," he said.

The exhibit will stay at its current location until late September, after which itwill betemporarily installed at Parliament Hill.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there were 117.3 million people in the world forcibly displaced at the end of 2023an eight per cent increase compared to the previous year. More than 43 million were refugees.

Ataman, who said there is less and less empathy for displaced peopleas the pressures of refugees on the countries receiving them increase, said it's important to turn the numbers back into "flesh and blood people."

"They're all individual humans with hopes and dreams," he said.