Boston’s newest art installation takes on world refugee crisis

Bostonians this week were met with a stark reminder of the growing refugee crisis as they crossed over Congress Street Bridge and caught site of the city’s latest art installation.

Twenty-two figurines can be seen clinging to inner tubes floating below in Fort Point Channel Basin. Each of them represents a daunting number.

“Each figure is representative of 1 million refugees worldwide,” said Emily O’Neil, spokesperson for Fort Point Arts Community, the organization that commissioned the installation.

In 2015, there were 21.3 million refugees worldwide, over half of which were under age 18, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees.

The 22 figures are anchored in water that separates South Boston from downtown and feeds into the Boston Harbor.

The installation, titled “SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers),” was created by two local artists, Ann Hirsch and Jeremy Angier.

A long history of accepting refugees

Hirsch and Angier said that although Boston is far from the refugee crisis, it’s connected in a way by the water.

“More than that, we wanted the art we put in the water to connect this small area of Fort Point Channel to all the bodies of water that people all over the world from all times have crossed in search of security and better lives,” Hirsch and Angier said in a joint statement to CNN.

“Boston was built by people who survived these journeys and the question today is what do we do with this tradition of welcoming immigrants, especially those in danger and in need.”

Throughout its 386-year history, Boston has accepted refugees from all over the world, from Irish people escaping their country’s devastating potato famine to those fleeing current conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

In recent years, harrowing images of refugees and migrants being rescued from sinking boats trying to cross from Africa to Europe have topped the news. Nearly 300,000 people fleeing persecution have reached European shores this year alone, according to the International Organization for Migration.

A woman cries after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018, according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.

Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.

Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."

Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."

Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.

Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a no-man's land on the border.

The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.

Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.

A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.

A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.

Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.

In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.

The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.

A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.

A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.

A ship crowded with migrants flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coast of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.

Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.

Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.

A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.

A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.

Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.

Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.

Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.

Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.

Syrian refugees sleep on the floor of a train car taking them from Macedonia to the Serbian border in August 2015. How to help the ongoing migrant crisis

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The majority of those refugees and migrants have come from war-torn Syria, Afghanisatn and Somalia.

“We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record,” according to UNCHR.

The Obama administration in August hit its goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States. The administration has stated that it may accept more in the next year.

The making of an art piece

SOS was selected earlier this year by a committee comprised of art professionals, artists and community members.

“The selection committee was particularly interested in the way our proposal connected our city to a global issue that so many of us are deeply concerned about right now,” Hirsch and Angier said.

Each figure was cast from polyurethane foam, painted and tied together. The art piece took six weeks to complete and was installed in the water on Monday.

The group of swimmers will be displayed through the end of the year.

This project marks 12 years Fort Point Arts Community has collaborated with Fort Point Channel to display temporary public art. SOS joins several other art exhibits on display in the channel, including “PYR2014,” which consists of Boston cobblestones floating in the shape of a pyramid.

This isn’t the first art exhibit highlighting the refugee crisis. A new traveling exhibition “Forced From Home” is on display in Boston. The exhibit allows visitors an interactive look at the challenges refugees and migrants face.

Early this year, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered a Berlin landmark with thousands of refugee life jackets.