Still Alive Notes from Australia's Immigration Detention System

˜Still Alive exemplifies the graphic novels capacity for juxtaposition as resistance. His intricately layered pages demonstrate the effect of government policies on real people. Eloise Grills, The Saturday PaperThose seeking asylum in Australia due to war, strife and violence in their home countries face extraordinary challenges both during their journey and upon arrival. Ahmeds book focuses on people who arrive in Australia by boat. For these people, a long, perilous journey ends with the often equally perilous obstacles they face when dealing with Australias legal processes, with the privations of onshore and offshore detention centres, and with inadequate health and psychological support.Still Alive also includes the authors own self-reflective thoughts on the ethics of telling other peoples stories, the aesthetics of comics and heavy metal, and the way art can be used for catharsis, healing and redemption after trauma.Safdar Ahmed is a Sydney-based artist, musician and educator. He is a founding member of the community art organisation Refugee Art Project, and member of eleven, a collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators and writers. He is the author of Reform and Modernity in Islam (IB Tauris, 2013) and the Walkley Award“winning documentary web-comic Villawood: Notes from an immigration detention centre (2015). He also sings and plays guitar with the anti-racist death metal band Hazeen