A handwritten note next to a photograph of a viola reads: “I carried this instrument first, for 7 hours through the mountains covered in snow when we had to escape from Serbian attac[k] on my home.” 

The viola belongs to Dijana Ihas – both the instrument and the woman are survivors of the Bosnian War that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The photo and text can be seen in the I Lived to Tell the World exhibit opening Monday, Jan. 27, at Oregon State University’s Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx).

I Lived to Tell the World aims to foster understanding and empathy for immigrants by showcasing stories of genocide survivors who live in Oregon. Monday’s opening will include a discussion panel. A show on Feb. 1 will feature storytelling by four Oregon-based speakers from Bosnia, Syria, Rwanda, and Cambodia, followed by a musical performance. 

“Our desire at PRAx was to engage in this project, in part because the survivors all live in Oregon,” said Peter Betjemann, director of PRAx. These stories “are not just large geopolitical abstractions,” he continued. “They’re the held and felt and experienced stories of our neighbors.”

I Lived to Tell the World is put on by The Immigrant Story, a nonprofit group that produces multimedia content centering on the experiences of immigrants and refugees. (The Immigrant Story is an ArtsWatch Community Partner.) Sankar Raman, the organization’s founder, hopes the project will promote empathic listening and understanding in audience members.

The multimedia exhibit will continue through March 1 in PRAx’s Toomey Lobby. It includes portraits of survivors from various conflict zones, along with the objects they carried, handwritten statements, and a short biography from the I Lived to Tell the World book by Elizabeth Mehren.  

“It’s vitally important for artistic experiences to ask us to confront the full range of human experience, including this level of suffering and violence,” Betjemann said.

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The objects survivors carried through conflict were photographed by Portland photographer Jim Lommasson, part of his What We Carried series. Each item is paired with a note written by the subject — an approach Lommasson took in previous projects working with Iraqi refugees and Holocaust survivors. 

“I’m continuing with this collaborative storytelling process,” Lommasson said. “It’s different from straight photojournalism with interviews and all that, and it’s kind of creating art together.” 

Lommasson asks his subjects to write what they feel, which may manifest as poetry, stories, or illustrations. He hopes the audience recognizes what the survivors carried and what they had to leave behind. Some may have left extended family, a job, school, religion, or language, Lommasson said. 

Monday’s opening will include a 5:30 p.m. discussion by Lommasson, Mehren, genocide survivor Saron Khut, and historian Katherin Hubler. Betjemann said the panel will primarily discuss how the project relates to Mehren’s book. 

Khut also will speak during the I Lived to Tell the World live show at 6 p.m. Feb. 1 in Detrick Hall. The show will begin with speakers, followed by a brief intermission. The second part of the show is musical, with singer Shivani Joshi performing traditional Ghazals and Qawwalis from South Asia. She will be joined by an ensemble of eight musicians “blending Sufi sounds with Western harmonies.” The opening and exhibition are free of charge; tickets to the live show are available here.

Samir Mustafic, who grew up in Bosnia, is one of the four speakers who will share his story in  the show. Mustafic lost his mother and sister in the Bosnian war, which also left him paralyzed. Arriving in Roseburg by way of what he called a series of miracles, Mustafic said he received a life-changing surgery and eventually found his way back to his high school sweetheart, whom he has since married. 

While his story may be difficult to relive, Mustafic said he believes it is important to help others understand what happened in Bosnia, and warn of the possibility of history repeating itself. 

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“As the human race, we seem to never learn the lesson and do any better,” Mustafic said. “My hope is that by sharing my story, I have a little, tiny influence on a small subset of people who, when they make decisions with other elections, or when they vote for politicians, they vote for people who are going to be good for [the] human race.”

Betjemann said the live show is unique among shows PRAx has put on. “We haven’t done something like that before, wherein the material that is expressed in one medium, namely narrative and story, then comes out in an additional medium, namely music,” he said.

Raman described the musical performance as an analogy, combining Indian classical and Western classical music. “It’s a celebration of our cultures,” Raman said.