Time flies so quickly - it’s been 10 years already. Remembering the following experience, which resulted, amongst other things, in this article (published here on “Culture Matters”):
The City of Light lives up to its name – Paris is currently hosting two radiant exhibitions of Syrian contemporary arts: Et pourtant, ils créent, at the Institut des Cultures de d’Islam; and Cris-action, Artistes en création, at the Institut du Monde Arabe. Both are powerful testimonies of art as a vehicle of sense despite, against and inside violence.
With the war in Syria came also the implosion of its artistic scene – while some artists fled abroad at the very beginning of “the revolution”, others tried to stay in country. Three years later, many Syrian artists now live in Damas, Beyrouth, Dubai or Paris. Some celebrate life by refusing to give a place to the violence that surrounds them; others choose to tell all about the war, documenting it in a way that makes all denial impossible; almost all use irony and poetry, surprising us beyond the ongoing tragedy. The artist Tammam Azzam for example affixes Klimt’s Kiss to a bullet-destroyed building; in doing so, he juxtaposes the best and the worst human beings are capable of.
“Kiss”, by Tamman azzam
Many artists are engaged politically and socially speaking. They try to organise and give a collective voice to the people – that is, to the same very people that political forces try to divide and render speechless. Internet and blogs in particular have become powerful platforms for social exchanges, participation and diffusion, all the more in a context where obviously, there are hardly any physical spaces to create and exhibit anymore. No is a collective of artists and activists working through a Facebook page. They use it as a platform for Syrian people to express their opposition to humiliation, despair and vengeance. One of their work streams showed people using their own body to form the word “no” in Arabic, echoing the monumental electoral banners that displayed “yes” (to Bachar All Assad) in the run-up of the elections.
“No”, Collective of artists
La Voix des Invisibles is an interactive and sonor installation by Samuel Aoun. He wanted to give a voice to the invisible human elements of this terrible war, to the marginalised members of the “civil society” about whom one talks but never listens to. A phone rings, the billboard urges you to pick it up, and so you do. On the line, someone telling you what his/her every day life in the conflict is. And you listen.
La Voix des Invisibles, by Samuel Aoun
The incredible creativity of Syrian artists make us wonder about what it takes to be an artist in a country in conflict, about what it means to create surrounded by chaos and destruction, and about what such violence does to creative practices.
In today’s Syria, creation is perhaps the most powerful act that can be. Creation against destruction, life against death, hope against despair. These artists elevate us beyond the disaster, tragedy, and inhumanity.
Background information: Jamel Oubechou and Elsa Jacquemin