The Syrian civil war has quickly become the world's single largest driver of displacemen and migration. As a result, neighboring Lebanon now hosts the largest refugee population per capita in the world, with 2 million refugees living in precarious situations. The UN has identified basic shelter as among the most pressing concern for Syrian families, who often find themselves in spaces not originally designed as shelters. According to the UNHCR March 2014 shelter survey, data collected throughout Beirut, South Lebanon, Akkar and the Bekaa show refugee homes lack many basic needs and services such as a roof, windows, doors, latrines, electricity and lighting, water supply and heating. Overcrowding is also a serious concern. This infographic art installation aims to shed light on this issue, highlighting the particular ways in which shelter is tied to the experiences of both personal and cultural loss.

Inspired by Syrian cultural and architectural heritage, each of the basic shelter needs is illustrated and embroidered with poignant detail to convey what the refugees are lacking but also what they are leaving behind when fleeing home. This brings about the nostalgic aspect of losing a window and all the personal and collective memories associated with such seemingly mundane aspects of what constitutes a home.

The monochromatic embroidered hoops, suspended in mid-thin air with a strand of threads dangling out and hanging unto the floor, feed into the data to symbolize the uncertain and ongoing pending fate of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. In the middle, a colored fabric collage depicting a typical Syrian refugee household, often housing multiple families, in folkloric textiles is hammered onto a wall, encircled by all the basic problems they are battling with on a daily basis.

Born in Lebanon of Armenian origins, Patil Tchilingurian has been adding colors and shapes to every surface she could find from an early age. Fusing her passion for art and design for social justice, her work uses different media such as collage, silkscreen, installation, data visualization, embroidery and urban interventions to create positive impact by shedding light on a panoply of contextual socio-cultural subjects. Her work has appeared in various group exhibitions in Beirut, Barcelona and Venice. Patil spent the last decade working as a visual communicator in the corporate world and currently runs Patchil, her own multidisciplinary design studio in Beirut where she strives to deliver immersive visual experiences in print and pixels. Although she is fortunate to enjoy the majority of the projects she works on, her embroidered illustrations bring her the most happiness.

She received a bachelor of graphic design and a minor in fine arts from the Lebanese

American University, supplementing her education with a summer program in studio arts at Metafora escuola arte y arteterapia, in Barcelona.

www.patchil.com