LOVE LETTERS - FROM AFGHANISTAN TO ESSEX

January 2026

Winter 24/25, Afghan artist Ghafar Tajmohammad joined Art Refuge in the Home Office’s Wethersfield Asylum Centre in rural Essex to bring weaving to The Community Table. We worked with groups of men in the large recreational NAAFI space seated on furniture covered in fabric left over from the site’s former airbase days. As time passed, weaving gave way to artworks inspired by 1st letters of people’s names in both Arabic/Farsi and in Latin scripts - their own initials or those of loved ones, of people left behind.

Intervening months saw the percolation of meaning for @ghaf.tm who started to construct in his studio new artworks - one a painted rug with a border inspired by the NAAFI seating fabric pattern, and a beautiful series of woven letters - transcriptions directly from images made by men seated around the table.

Fast forward one year to @firstsitecolchester where Ghaf recently exhibited the resulting new works with support of @counterpointsarts. In early January, as part of the new iteration of our project The Hope Bridge, 4 men from Afghanistan, one of whom is an artist himself, took the bus journey from Wethersfield to join us for a moving workshop led by Ghaf alongside his work.

Across several hours we ourselves experienced the men’s presence bringing the artworks to life, which they each appeared to meet with their own memories, emotions and ways of seeing, allowing the meaning of the images to deepen and shift through their lived experience.

For the Afghan artist we have known for some months: ‘Experiencing the artworks of Ghaffar Tajmohammad drew me into the depths of emotion and the dark days of Afghanistan—exile, migration, and the weight of a difficult journey. A mirror of shared sorrow and feeling. The artist brings pain and reality together, and in my view, this creation is truly valuable and worthy of admiration.’

Ghaf reflected that the men’s visit completed a circle. From The Community Table to the artist’s studio, into the gallery, and back into a shared act of viewing.

Words by Katie Miller & Thomas Etheridge.

The Hope Bridge - funded by Ben & Jerry’s Fund, the Tide Foundation.