It has been organized by the association Euskal Australiar Elkartea, created in 2018 and of which Esther Korta Gabiola, daughter and niece of cane cutters in the southern country, where her father travelled with three more brothers and stayed seven years, is the secretary.
She has spent years researching and publishing on the Basque flow in general and especially to Australia, an emigration of which she indicates that it is “a less known and explained diaspora, compared to the American and other places, although there are several investigations”.
Esther and other people related to this emigration to Oceania created the association with the aim of raising awareness of emigration to Australia. In this case to collect testimonies, information, photographs etc. of the people who remain there or of the returnees, to elaborate a contrasted field work and to make it known.
The project, whose responsible and curator was Korta herself, was supported by the Basque Government, in collaboration with the UPV-EHU (Public University of the Basque Country), and is deposited in the Diaspora Archive, located in the Historical Archive of Euskadi, based in Bilbao and open to descendants, researchers and the general public. It preserves forty oral testimonies of emigrants, plus documentary material.
The result of this project is the photographic exhibition, which opened on September 8, Diaspora Day, at the Euskal Herria Museum in Gernika-Lumo. It offers ten thematic panels of photographs on the historical context, travel, work, social groups, families, the particular experience of women, leisure or socio-cultural customs.
The snapshots are black and white images, chosen from the hundreds taken by emigrants and sent to their families.
The exhibition will be open at the Basque Home in Madrid (Calle Jovellanos, 3) until February 1.