« Où Est La Maison De Mon Ami ? »

A Panorama of Contemporary Syrian Art Exhibition: January 22 – April 14, 2019 Venue: Maison des arts de Malakoff, 105 Avenue du 12 Février 1934, 92240 Malakoff, France The exhibition is organized with the collaboration of the collective Portes ouvertes sur l’art contemporain syrien The exhibition « Où Est La Maison De Mon Ami ? » (Where Is My Friend’s House?) brings together the work of some twenty Syrian artists at the Maison des Arts, a center for contemporary artRead more

Everywhere At Home, Yet Nowhere Feeling Home

A spirit of Discovery Against Rootlessness Syrian photographer Baraa Rajab Basha exhibits his series of portraits at the TUFA in Trier, Germany, from January 11 to Februar 03, 2019. “Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they’re gonna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.” Homeless man Chris Gardner’s inspirational quote fromRead more

Mohamad Hafez: How He Uses Artwork to Celebrate Syria’s Past

With his new sculptures, the Syrian artist who lives in the US sees it as his ‘duty’ to create art that reminds people of the beauty of his country. In Mohamad Hafez’s sculptures, every detail brings a part of Syria to life. A doll-sized porcelain plate represents how people would send food to their neighbors. Syrian and Jewish fabric fragments on a clothes line embody the region’s diversity. And the decorations on a building mimic Greek and Roman symbols allRead more

Syria, Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart

Syria, Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart An exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York October 13, 2018–January 13, 2019 Syria, Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart recounts the changing stories of refugees in Syria over time—then and now—and places their differing experiences, a century apart, in a global context. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Syria gave shelter to refugees from Russia—ethnic Circassians, displaced by the Russian conquestRead more

Khaled Barakeh . The Blue Hour

Between a lost identity and the belonging to a foreign culture As part of the Days of Exile, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) showed from 16 November 2018 until 13 January 2019 works by Syrian Artist Khaled Barakeh. In his work, the artist deals with long-term conflicts and their possible pacification, the experience of torture, flight and exile and how refugees cope with their war experiences, biographical breaks and with a new beginning. His approximately 20 works,Read more

Calligraphy is a Meeting with God

Artist Khaled Al Saai – A portrait, an encounter Khaled Al Saai summarizes the history of Syria in a painting. In 2018, he has been an Artist in Residence at the Museum of Islamic Art, Pergamon Museum in Berlin. “Calligraphy is music for the eye”, writes Syrian-German author Rafik Schami in the afterword to his novel “The Secret of the Calligrapher”. “For the less”, answers Khaled Al Saai smiling, one of the ten most important calligraphers in the world. AsRead more

A Book Long Buried in the Garden

Ahmad Kaddour . Inspired by a Book Long Buried in the Garden As told to Hosam Aboul-Ela, Oct. 7, 2016 I left my home in Damascus for a life in Europe decades ago, long before the migrant waves of today. At the time, I was an active member of the political left in a country run by the military and the secret police, so I had no real future in Syria. But my main motive for going to Paris in my 20sRead more

Voices Louder Than Gunfire

A Kiss for Syria: Tammam Azzam In early 2011, Damascus was witnessing the rise of a revolution. The world was beginning to notice a rebirth occurring in the Syrian capital and from all corners of the globe, it was being watched with a wary eye. Art had seized the city and the force of this renaissance was reverberating far beyond its ancient walls. People were flying to Damascus to buy art, and Syrian artists were being flown out to exhibitRead more

World Leaders As Refugees

A Syrian Artist Is Painting World Leaders As Refugees For An Important Reason “Those leaders who are partly responsible for the displacement of Syrians, maybe they will feel what it is to be vulnerable.” Abdalla Al Omari, a Syrian painter, filmmaker, and performance artist, is painting world leaders as refugees in an effort to humanize the ongoing refugee crisis in his home country while also casting powerful leaders in a vulnerable light. The Vulnerability Series, which was on display atRead more

A Colorful Humanism

Inventing figures that evade the classical vision, reflecting the everyday life and the human spirit, joy, sadness, violence and hope without time or space limitations, breaking the imposed framework in order to achieve a universe peculiar to himself, while maintaining a civic and humanistic connection with today’s world, such are the impressions that the art of Yaser Safi offers to the viewer: an art that breathes and blows a wind of freedom. We met him in Berlin, where he settledRead more