Culturally speaking, the concept of place for many Syrian artists has been interwoven with contemplations about one’s self, identity and authenticity. The migration and alienation of artists from this inflicted spot of the world played a unique role in shaping their unique personal experiences. It is worth mentioning that migration should not be considered as a brand new experience for Syrian artists. During the 1960s for example, moving to Europe was a pragmatic decision for many. Now amid current political developments, the burden of surviving the Syrian genocide weighs heavily on the shoulders of all emigrés. They ruminate on what has been left of the homeland, the human being, love, beauty, and the future. All of these thoughts are compacted in a backpack that the artist carries along in exile. For Syrian artists, all the memories and nostalgic scenes that home symbolizes have long provided a source of special visual terms and compositions. This is emphasized by the fact that such regional heritage has continuously evoked a rooted sense of the place as a theme in the artwork.

Historically, the experience and the memory of modern Syrian Plastic art was seldom heritage-related. It was rather fraught with pure, or in some other cases, hybrid Western forms. But at the same time, it embraced a cultural tendency directed toward employing ornamental elements. This is the method of the self-Orientalising artist, who tends to reanimate the abstract ornamental heritage through special understanding of visual memory. This involves engaging with geometric and sometimes botanical symbols or with other diverse elements like caligraphy on the canvas. This is what is conveyed in the works of Mahmoud Hammad, who used traditional ornamentation as a plastic element. Hammad sought to establish some sort of Arabic identity in the global art scene by relying on the long-standing heritage of Arabic calligraphy and arabesque; two of the most significant visual products in the region. Hammad was interested in incorporating the aesthetic and delicate features of Arabic calligraphy, accompanied by modern rhythmic colours of contemporary Plastic composition.

And with the pioneers of the modern art movement in Syria, one cannot but notice a certain level of passion for space. The countryside or city scenery and the special details, they can all be recognized in the artwork. Exhibited in modern expressive tools that are mixed with elements of the places they emerge from (the atmosphere, light, soil and local rocks). Sometimes, tangible materials are incorporated, especially in sculpture, such as Basalt rocks from South Syria. Louay Kayali, the artist of daily life, is among these pioneers, especially with his unique skill in engaging the line to compose the working masses. Kayali used these lines to track and record the features of the place which to a certain extent, exposes our identity as people who belong to Syria. This was a significant turning point in the history of Syrian art. It marked a retraction from the dominant tendency of copying the landscape paintings of French exhibitionists, to favour a practice of portraiture sustained by identifiable shapes and negative space. This can be noticed in his paintings depicting the defeated faces of fatigued street vendors sitting on wooden chairs. The experience of Kayali is also characterized in its intimate relation with the details and scenery of particular places. Some of those paintings are Boys, Sock Sellers, Grandmothers, Shoe Shine Boys, Chewing Gum sellers, In the Village and Margarita.

Nevertheless, the recent developments in the region have created a unique context that forcibly changed the concept of belonging to a place, accompanied by a violent and rapid withdrawal on an emotional and spiritual level. As a result, the question of place is no longer an issue for Syrian identity, heritage or traditions. Rather, it has become a geographical as well as a sentimental theme. The depiction of constant movement and decamping, drove artists to come up with nascent tools under shifting and tense conditions. With a clear tendency to overcome that rigorous relationship (identity, self, roots) towards a freer and more direct interaction with the artwork, immersing a new sense, realizing aesthetic and sensational details. Finally, processing them on the canvas or into sculpture. This can be noticed through the colours, the themes and the composition of the landscape. Thus, the theme of place still exists in such artistic processes, but in a contemporary sense and in much more flexible and foreign forms.

Among these experiences are artists like Zavin Yosouf, Khaled Barakah, Khaled Al-Boushi, Alaa Abou Shaheen and Nour Asalia who are scattered in different places around the world. These new blood artists can be seen as an extension to Kayali’s experience. Their experience stems from the circumstances and conditions they’ve been through; some kind of response to the current situation. They changed the topic and the materials used to express it. For Alaa Abou Shaheen this involves a shift from the classic form of sculpting a beautiful body, towards making a donkey from newspapers or a man with a big moustache and a small penis. While Nour Asalia worked in a space similar to Kayali, working with unusual materials; making organs instead of full bodies, using very casual everyday materials.

In an interview with Asalia by the Alfaisal magazine, the artist looks at the Plastic art scene and its development in her country, along with the question of place and the legacy affiliated with it. She argues that there is no identity for the contemporary Syrian art scene; there is nothing that can be described as mutual characteristics that could identify those experiences. For her, academic classifications will be limited, as long as they are based on the assumption of a unified experience due to mere geographical or political affiliation. Asalia reminds us that most of the older generations of Syrian artists gained their academic experience in Europe. What can be seen as common characteristics of the Syrian art scene in her opinion are the “mutual anxieties” they live, at a time when the question of identity has become a matter of inclusive classification, and which contemporary art tends to drive away from towards “proclaiming the individuality of the artist”. And in this context, “to seek that individual experience” is a reflection of this contemporary phase.

With painter and sculptor Alaa Abou Shaheen, one can see an artwork that is the product of systematic analysis of distinctive features and elements of the creatures that are depicted. These features and elements might bear certain social or traditional values. Shaheen’s work often combines features of a human being, animals or even abstract elements. This process manifests itself through sarcastic visual elements and abstract, as well as expressionistic, touches, aiming to reveal the illusion of knowledge, hostility and destruction surrounding our life.

As mentioned before, most experiences of the pioneering artists were influenced by original Western forms using their own aesthetic and cultural terms. It was an experience of a specific and envisioned place. Today, younger artists are recently working on initial forms and trying to grasp the characteristics and components of a transforming, rather than a fixed place, accompanied by cultural formations which stem from daily life experiences.

Across the ages, different kinds of visual arts have maintained an intimate relationship with place. Expressed in abstract visual elements through epitomizing landscapes, cities and streets and then redistributing them on the artwork. It can be a real or imaginary reflection of the place dwelling inside the artist. While at other times, mixed with feelings towards it and how it lives inside us as a place full of surprises and love that we encounter in our everyday life. Without an identity or decoration, without architecture or symbols. In this case, the place is expressed through artistic drives such as anger, release, exposure or nakedness. This place lives outside rooted theorization and is always swinging between the imaginary and what is being experienced. This is how the outcast and non-belonging artist, overwhelmed with turbulent and dehumanizing pressures, carries on. Following different escape routes and looking into the unknown searching for relations, features and details of the modern human action and history. Leaving behind so many questions; is the human-being still alive? And do we really need art and critique amid the escalating frenzy of the 21st-century human being?

The Meaning of Space: a Brief History of Modern Art in Syria

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