Ongoing from October 2025
Original Works: Photographic prints, dimensions variable, 15 blades, 120 cm x 80 cm each
Palm Plaza
In this powerful photographic series, Hazara photojournalist Barat Ali Batoor documents the perilous journey undertaken by asylum seekers fleeing persecution, including his own journey from Afghanistan to Australia. Hazara Exodus captures intimate moments of fear, endurance and fleeting relief—revealing the human face of forced migration and the hidden realities of displacement.
Presented here across fifteen suspended blades, the installation slices through public space as both a visual intervention and a symbolic gesture: each image a fragment of a much larger narrative of exile. The Hazara, a historically persecuted ethnic group, remain among the most at-risk groups in Afghanistan and the diaspora.
Batoor’s lens insists on visibility, transforming lived experience into testimony and resistance.
This work speaks directly to many communities in Dandenong—people whose lives have also been shaped by migration, movement, and the search for safety.
About the Artist
Barat Ali Batoor, a multi-award-winning photographer and filmmaker began his career in 2002 and held his first solo exhibition in 2007. His work has been showcased globally, including in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and published in renowned outlets like The Washington Post, Newsweek, and The Guardian. Batoor received a photography grant from New York’s Open Society Institute in 2009 and won the Nikon-Walkleys Photo of the Year 2013 award.
His documentary, “Batoor: A Refugee Journey”, won Best Director at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Batoor teaches photojournalism at RMIT University and received the Dean’s Award for Exemplary Sessional Staff Member in 2021. He has spoken at TEDxSydney and TEDxIIITV.
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Palm Plaza
