Now You See Me Moria is a poster project raising awareness about the EU humanitarian crisis

Now You See Me Moria is a poster project aiming to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis in the EU, more specifically at Camp Moria in Lesbos, Greece. The project has compiled over 422 response from designers who have submitted posters – each of which can be downloaded, printed and placed in public spaces.

Officially launching on 14 February to coincide with valentines day, the project asks the public to amplify the situation by putting these posters up for all to see, and those who take part are encouraged to take pictures of the public poster and share on social media. You can add your location and tag the account @now_you_see_me_moria and @love_for_moria. There is a particular call out (but not exclusively) for those living in cities with major EU institutions such as Brussels, The Hague, Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Frankfurt, as well across Portugal.

Initiated by Dutch photographer and photo editor Noemí, the project then saw Qutaeba from Syria, and Ali and Amir from Afghanistan – Amir is a refugee living in Camp Moria – come together to spread awareness to the situation. Since August 2020, the group has been collating stories and photographs to document life in the camp. This has now been composed into an Instagram account, all with the aim of spreading awareness across Europe.

The deadline for submitting posters has now drawn to a close, but the project asked contributors from across Europe to submit a series of posters based on the images shared by the refugees who are currently housed in Moria. The posters have now been made available for anyone to download.

In the midst of the pandemic, there were 7,000 adults and children living in the small tents provided in the camp, which is regularly flooded by rainfall. Journalists are not permitted to visit the camp and those who work there aren’t allowed to take pictures, which means that the living standards remain unknown to the EU public. That’s why Now You See Me Moria was born; the collaborative project aims to spread awareness about the conditions and to provide a platform to give a voice to the people who live there.

The project also arose as a personal response from Noemí who, while scrolling through Facebook one evening, came across a photograph of a friend who’d spent five months in Lesbos covering the situation there. The photographer was Amir H.Z., an Afghan refugee living in the camp, who was pleading for recognition. “I felt how much he wanted to share what was happening there, at a moment when Europe was only focussing on itself,” says Noemí in the project’s statement online. She decided to write to him and start the Instagram account, and in August last year, she was joined by the other two team members.

All are welcome to join in the public display of posters on 14 February. Below you can see a selection of the posters available, including contributions from designers such as Erik Schöfer, Georgia Tsatsaoura, Hauke Irrgang, Katerina Trakakis, Krayc Witte and Lisa Schwedek.