Nico Krijno
Kigeme, Mugombwa, and Mahama Refugee Camps, Rwanda
Protecting Young Refugees Through Sport
Sport plays an ever-greater role in the work of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to bring positive value to children’s lives. Between 2017 and 2019, UNHCR and the IOC partnered on the Sport for Protection project to enhance the protection of refugee children and youth residing in six refugee camps across Rwanda through various sports activities. Basic needs relating to sport and physical recreation in the camps had to be addressed, including a lack of spaces and materials for playing sport and capacity building among refugee coaches. Playing grounds were constructed in each of the camps, and a total of 189 local coaches were trained to facilitate daily physical activities.
Sport does many things for young refugees:
- It’s a form of protection.
- A catalyst for community integration.
- It brings people together and fosters friendships but also to respect one another (and the rules of the game).
- It motivates their existence and channels their thoughts and behaviour towards something positive.
- It gives them back the taste of something they lost in their childhood.
- It boosts their self-confidence and builds life skills.
- Sport is a right for all.
For more information, please see http://www.unhcr.org/sport-partnerships.html
Biography
Nico Krijno (b. 1981, South Africa) works at the blurry intersection of photography, collage, painting, sculpture and performance, with a background in theatre and experimental video. Probing the thresholds of each, his work materialises through a stream of unique and colourful abstractions that act as autonomous pieces of art, but when seen as a collection, Krijno’s obsession and constant intrigue into the perception of photographs becomes decidedly evident.
Often working with discarded materials found in his immediate surroundings, he interprets and re-imagines them to find alternative structures for how meaning and matter are both constructed and perceived. Photographing these ephemeral structures, as he describes himself, are a private and physical performance, with the camera being the audience. Importantly, the act of photographing these theatrical scenes is only one part of Krijno’s work. Through an array of digital tools, he then re-imagines the materials, colours and forms countless times until our understanding of each photograph is constantly being challenged, always failing to remain still.
Selected solo exhibitions include ‘Under Construction’, The Ravestijn Gallery, Amsterdam, NL (2015); ‘New Gestures: Fabricated to be Photographed’, WHATIFTHEWORLD Gallery, Cape Town, SA (2015); ’On How To Fill Those Gaps’ (2011) – and the accompanying self-published book – was widely lauded, and selected works have since been included in group shows in Edinburgh, Milan, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Glasgow and London. He was nominated for the Paul Huf Award 2013. He lives and works in South Africa.