There’s an ancient Greek thought experiment called The Ship of Theseus. It goes like this: Theseus has a ship. Over time, the sail is torn, planks decay and the mast rots. One by one, each is replaced, until one day, no part of the original ship remains. The question is: is it still the same ship?

This came to mind as I was viewing the Of Ordinary Things exhibition: a collection of art created by female Iraqi refugees, forced migrants, asylum seekers, and women otherwise left with no choice but to flee their homeland. You can feel the incredible loss these artists have endured, a unifying theme throughout the pieces here, which mixes several mediums: clay, collage, quilting and handicraft. The underlying thrum is not just the loss of home, but of identity: are we still the same person, when stripped of everything that we made our own?

The art was created at an ongoing series of monthly workshops created by Raina Ibrahim, an Iraqi Archeologist who relocated to Oxford in 2003. Raina created the project to build a community of like-minded women, and make the painful and tumultuous process of rebuilding a life in a new country a bit less daunting for newcomers.

Footage of the workshops accompanies the exhibition on a small monitor mounted amidst the pieces. It reveals that the art-making process also proves deeply cathartic for its participants. ‘Do not ask me about what happened’ says one participant ‘I cannot talk about it. But I can express it through art’

The exhibition stays true to its name: this is very much about the ‘Ordinary Things’ that make up life. You get the sense as well, that as Iraqi culture prizes and equates womanhood with homemaking, those forced to flee are left with an even deeper chasm. There is a display of small clay pieces - a diorama, made from paper collaged with magazine images, holds a tiny table set with dishes and food. A gold varnished pot and lid, the size of a golf ball, is surrounded by clay food items and displayed with an accompanying placard:

“Using clay to explore our identity as Iraqi women, we show the importance we place on food, family, and celebration. We become the protective vessel, holding everything ‘in one pot’”

One of the most moving pieces is also one of the most straightforward: a mind map on a large sheet of paper, centring the words ‘home and journey’ in a bubble that connects the two halves, split vertically down the middle, one side watercoloured a sunlit orangey peach shade (‘home’) and the other a chalky, foreboding grey-black (‘journey’). In the home section, the artists’ word choices are concrete and evocative, rain, date trees and factory smells, jasmine and yoghurt. But in the journey section, this certainty fades, and the words and phrases - struggles, thinking too much, may never see again, no future - are far more abstract. The effect creates a both haunted and haunting piece. The piece is orbited by sixteen drawings, each with its own magazine diorama, which in turn, frames a tiny photograph. These seem in conversation with several folding ‘books’ - long papers fan-folded into booklets, full of old photos and still from cartoons and movies. They feel highly personal and in that, evoke a universal nostalgia: for childhood, safety, and family. Through a gentle, confiding specificity, they assert rich and meaningful Iraqi lives that stretch far beyond the turmoil rocking the country and demand not to be defined by it. Above this, mounted on the wall a collection of large pencil drawings confront the trauma head-on: images of children crying and uniformed men rounding on distraught families are painful to look at.

Other pieces include a quilted map of the country with personal landmarks and memories embroidered into it, a collage documenting the creation of this particular exhibition, cherished objects craftily repurposed into new household items - a leather vase cover made from an old handbag, a sofa cover is crocheted using wool from clothes belonging to Ibrahim’s family.

Throughout, you can feel the profound strength and resilience of these women. You get the feeling Ibrahim’s workshops are likely the first chance its participants have gotten to stop and acknowledge their struggles and incredible bravery in the face of them since leaving their homeland.

As a viewer, I would have appreciated a bit more structure and narrative throughout, differentiating the stories and allowing more of an eye into the journey - it’s there, certainly, but I had to search for it more than I might have been able to if I’d visited this exhibit in a non-professional capacity.

But this is a minor criticism of a moving and delicately rendered exhibition. Moving, fragile, vulnerable, plain-faced - it made my heart ache.