Literature

The Soleless series emerged as a response during a four-month artist residency program with Deveron Project, dedicated to actively engaging and reintegrating newly arrived Syrian refugee communities into the UK. Through direct involvement in the challenging process of resettlement, Haidar shares firsthand accounts and interpersonal exchanges that unfold over perilous passages. The narratives encapsulate stories of separation, loss, and the everyday realities faced by these individuals, intimately embroidered onto the undersides of worn shoes.

In this series, Haidar employs discarded and recycled shoes collected from migrant communities, objects that bear the physical traces of their original wearers—their markings, wear-and-tear, and the accumulated dirt. The disintegration of the shoe becomes a poignant marker, symbolising the arduous journey of forced displacement and traversing borders. With the permission of the wearer, Haidar transforms the discarded shoes of migrants into vessels of storytelling, overlaying the inherent narratives of the worn shoes with new tales. In one piece, Orphaned, 2022 a father walking ahead of his children is tragically shot, leaving the children orphaned. Another work, Snipper, 2019 reveals the hidden presence of a sniper behind a building, indiscriminately firing into residential areas. Each piece in the Soleless series serves as a testament to the intersection of personal narratives and broader socio-political realities, inviting viewers to contemplate the profound impact of displacement and conflict on the human experience.