Exploring "Ek Khaale: Once Upon A Time - The Rohingya," A Presentation of Rohingyan Stories and History

The Rohingya have often been described as the most persecuted minority in the world. A stateless ethnic group, to the global west, their story is often one of tragedy. Ek Khaale, a new photo exhibit showing at Hart House, explores their story through culture, history, and perseverance. The Ek Khaale project is a collaborative, co-participatory storytelling and visual restoration project presenting the Rohingya people, and their stories, through materials and stories from the past activated in the present. Greg Constantine, in collaboration with Rohingya youth and elders, spearheaded a project that sought out miraculously preserved historical materials to challenge and reconstruct what successive Burmese regimes have been trying to destroy. This past month, I had the opportunity to attend the opening ceremony and talk for this exhibit where Greg Constantine, Matthew Walton, and Saifullah Mohammed set the foundation for the exhibit's audience through art, history, and lived experience.

In his introductory remarks, Matthew Walton, an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, highlighted that although Ek Khaale focuses on the Rohingya community, one of the many objectives of this project, and the series of events created in Toronto, is to create a space of solidarity through a kind of visual storytelling. The purpose is to create an immersive exhibit of the Rohingya, and other communities from Myanmar can engage with this and use it as a point of departure for shared narratives and dialogue with each other.

Saifullah Muhammad, an advocate for the Rohingya and the co-founder of the Rohingya Centre of Canada expressed his deep gratitude towards the Ek Khaale project. Underscoring the significance of the Rohingya people in shaping Burmese culture and history, he discussed the disconnect between the younger generations of the Rohingya people both in Myanmar and around the world, stemming from experiences of displacement and genocide. The exhibit transcends depictions of cruelty and violence experienced by the minority group but also demonstrates evidence of their existence and their rich culture, who they are and where they came from.

Greg Constantine, an award-winning documentary photographer, author, and journalist, spearheaded this project. His exhibit presents his 18-year journey documenting the persecution of the Rohingya people. Through his work, Constantine describes the slow cultural erasure of the Rohingya, from forced labour and land seizures to the destruction of mosques. From documenting the Rohingya communities in Bangladesh to capturing erased identities in Myanmar, Constantine formulates a visual narrative of the cultural erasure of the Rohingya identity.

To share an unseen visual portrait of this minority group, he presents contributions from the Rohingya, including old photographs, family collections, documents, letters, and illustrations in conjunction with historical materials from a variety of public and private archives.

As he introduced his work, Constantine discussed his shifting methodology and focus of the project from photographing the current state of Myanmar and the Rohingya people to one that seeks out pre-existing documents and photographs, allowing an exploration of the culture of the Rohingya beyond the tragedy in which they live, rather it highlights the richness of culture and

life they experienced before through these preserved artifacts of history. The Ek Khaale exhibit explores tensions of the fragility of belonging, identity, and evidence of existence.

As guests were invited to experience the exhibit themselves, and face history, Matthew Walton reflected on the need for reconciliation requiring engagement with the contradictions of Myanmar’s past, particularly in its history of periods of peaceful interreligious coexistence among different groups. Memories of cooperation and mutual support are obscured by recent genocidal violence, further emphasizing the need for remembrance and revival.

A special thank you goes out to the co-sponsors who made this event possible: Myanmar Policy and Community Knowledge (MyPACK), the Asian Institute, Myanmar Culture Club, Tea Circle, The Burma Canadian Association of Ontario, and the Rohingya Centre of Canada and supported by the IDRC’s Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar (K4DM) project.

The exhibit, located on the second floor of Hart House, will be open for public viewing for the month of October. Hart House staff will also conduct exhibition tours on the 1st and 6th of November, 2024. The Ek Khaale project is also available to be viewed online through its official website.