Safdar Ahmed visited Sydney's Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in 2011. He brought pencils and sketchbooks with him and began drawing with the detainees. Weaving journalism, history, and autobiography, Still Alive is an intensely personal indictment of Australia's refugee detention policies and procedures, which are not unlike those in many Western nations. It is also a searching reflection on the redemptive power of art. (And death metal.).
