It was heartbreak that almost ended Faduma Abukar. But an opportunity enabled her to turn it into a new beginning. For years, the Somali refugee had treated painting as a lonely release while living in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, a catharsis to express the pain and frustration of being stuck in a foreign land with few prospects and an uncertain future.
Every time Faduma’s mother went to the local Internet café to speak to their father, who was toiling as a migrant worker 5,000 miles away in northern Europe, she would beg the manager for scraps of used printing paper to bring home to Faduma and her six sisters. The family had no television at home and barely enough food—just two meals a day of rice and vegetables. “Meat was a real luxury we had maybe once every three months,” Faduma, 26, tells TIME.
As refugees without official documentation, school or official work was out of reach, rendering drawing and painting their only escape from a bleak existence inside those four walls. “Because we did have money, we just had to stay at home,” Faduma recalls. “You cannot go to school; you cannot really go outside.”
A childhood friend who had earlier moved from Addis to Canada and had been suggested as a possible husband for Faduma offered a ray of hope. “My mom loved him; my sisters loved him,” she says. “He was really the perfect guy for me.” But there was a problem. As the suitor belonged to a rival Somali tribe, Faduma’s father stubbornly refused to sanction the union. “He was so angry,” recalls Faduma.
Around the same time, a dear cousin of Faduma’s died after falling into a deep depression sparked by her parents similarly rejecting a love match. “I saw my cousin getting sicker and I thought I faced the same destiny,” recalls Faduma, eyes welling.
Faduma’s heartbreak and ongoing acrimony with her father led her to embrace art as a form of therapy, pouring her pain and rage onto the page. Then, in late 2022, Faduma heard that…
