Mogadishu Dreaming (2010)

Mogadishu Dreaming depicts painter Ahmed's struggle to reconcile his idealized memories of his homeland Somalia with its disintegration. Through his vivid paintings that mesh Mogadishu and Sydney landscapes, Ahmed processes his own displacement by creating an imaginary world that celebrates the best of both cultures, whilst alluding to brutal political upheavals and his personal traumas of migration, racism and illness. Ahmed demonstrates how a creative person can be in one location, but thousands of miles away in a spirited imagination.