Abstract
A new exhibition showcases Syrian artists pioneering new channels for defiance. Co-curator
Every revolution produces its own imagery. The collective Alshaab Alsori Aref Tarekh (‘the Syrian people know their way’) challenges nearly 50 years of monolithic Ba’ath Party iconography in their political posters, currently on show in the exhibition Culture in Defiance: Continuing Traditions of Satire, Art and the Struggle for Freedom in Syria. The significance of these new posters, available as print on demand online, was put into perspective for me by the exhibition’s fellow curator Aram Tahhan, who once stayed in a military-owned hotel. ‘Everywhere there were pictures of Bashar al Assad or his father, his three children, his martyr brother and sometimes his elegant wife. These prevented the residents from appearing in the corridors in their swimming suits, presumably to protect the modesty of the president.’ Sometimes the messages of a brutal state can live in unexpected ways in the minds of the subjugated.
My love affair with Syria began long before I co-curated Culture in Defiance. I saw Damascus for the first time when I was 16. In my early 20s, as a young journalist, I lived there one summer with Palestinian fedayeen as I moved in and out of war-torn Beirut writing my first big feature.
From 2000 onwards, I regularly returned for work and pleasure, which included researching the book The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie with Rana Salam. In the basements of the racy lingerie factories, conducting lengthy interviews with the religious men who designed and manufactured bras and panties that sang, lit up or fell apart at the sound of a hand clap, Rana and I came close to understanding what could only be described as a uniquely Syrian national character. It can blend manufacturing inventiveness with pragmatism, and spirituality with a wicked sense of humour. The men and the women we interviewed were forthright and generous.
So last year, when I started seeing the bombs beginning to fall in Syria on my television screen in London, it was like watching friends face down a military onslaught. No right-thinking individual, I thought to myself, could stand by, and say and do nothing.
The idea for the exhibition grew after a number of meetings and events with Syrians in London. I had been running after the Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat for a lengthy Index interview and his words were ringing in my ears: ‘I haven’t seen the British, Dutch or French demonstrating against what’s happening in Syria in the way they demonstrated against the Vietnam war.’ After the launch of his exhibition in London in March, the Syrian journalist and translator Leen Zyiad, Reel Syria’s Dan Gorman, his wife Yasmin and I, shared a taxi while rushing to catch a lecture by the Italian visual critic Donatella Della Ratta. On the way, we discussed how the violence in Syria had effectively obscured the country’s new art of resistance, and exchanged ideas on the best way of bringing this work to a wider audience in the West.
Donatella’s illustrated talk included remarkable user-generated internet footage by Syrian artists, animators and activists – all of it produced since the revolution began – and made it apparent that an exhibition was urgently needed. Eventually Donatella joined Leen, Aram and I in curating Culture in Defiance, with the support of the Prince Claus Fund. Alongside the cartoons of Ali Ferzat, the exhibition features the first series of the cyber-puppet play Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator.
Through the use of finger puppets, which are easy to smuggle through checkpoints, the anonymous Syrian artists’ group Masasit Mati captures not only the insecurity of a regime but also the nuanced nature of Syrian politics. In one episode, Hafez al Assad appears as a long murderous shadow over the entire country. But puppet semantics are not one-sided, as explained by director Jameel – who always appears masked in public. ‘The purpose of our art is to address Syria – all of the country, the Syria that’s revolting, the silent Syria and the regime as well,’ he told me.
At the heart of the exhibition is the mass creative dissent that has been taking place in Syrian cities through song, dance and illustration. In the publication that accompanies the exhibition are cartoons from Amude, a largely Kurdish town on the border of Turkey, and birthplace of Abdulbaset Sieda, who was appointed, in June, as the new president of the main opposition group, the Syrian National Council. Drawing satirical cartoons does not come easily to people who have never lampooned their political leaders because of draconian defamation laws, which could land them in jail, facing torture and a five-year sentence.
Like most of the anonymous work featured in the Prince Claus Fund gallery, our two Syrian curators – Leen and Aram – understandably use pseudonyms. There are exceptions: contributors to veteran Syrian artist Youssef Abdelki’s Facebook page Art.Liberte.Syria, better known as Art and Freedom, sign their work in solidarity with the thousands of victims and prisoners of the uprising. Another engaged artist, Khalil Younes, has been inspired by Goya and produces powerful pen and ink drawings of Syrian martyrs that have gone viral over the internet or have been turned into stencils on Syrian streets.
It was nearly impossible for us to find high resolution imagery of the graffiti that started the revolution, since both spray painting and documenting it are highly dangerous pursuits. Don Karl, from Here to Fame Publishing in Berlin, came up with a timely solution. He sent his co-editor of Arabic Graffiti, Arabic type designer and typographer Pascal Zoghbi, onto the streets of Beirut. His pictures captured the remnants of Freedom Graffiti Week Syria, an international campaign in the spring that roused the ire of pro-Assad forces who vandalised the street art.
The voices of ordinary people close the exhibition. After being obscured and silenced by decades of dictatorship, the Syrians are finally telling the world who they really are. The dreams they have for their future are not so very different from our own.
Beeshu, the president of Syria and starring finger puppet of Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator. Photograph courtesy of Masasit Mati, 2011
Both cartoons are from, and signed in the name of, the mainly Kurdish town of Amude, northeast Syria
Top image: The genie asks Bashar: ‘What is your command?’ He answers: ‘Enough time to destroy our people.’ The words ‘international community’ appear on the magic lantern
Bottom image: Two skeletons cry out: ‘Curse your soul, Hafez!’ A bony foot has been placed on his skull
Civil Defense Is a Legitimate Right by the Syrian poster collective Alshab Alsori Aref Tarekh, 2011
My Beauty Out of My Freedom by Alshab Alsori Aref Tarekh, 2011
Hamza Bakkour (pen and ink, 40–50cm) by Khalil Younes, 2011
About a Young Man Called Kashoosh (pen and ink, 30–40cm) by Khalil Younes, 2011
Homs, the Mother of All Heroes
Text reads: ‘The king of the jungle rides a tank’, a play on the meaning of Assad, ‘lion’, in Arabic. The Bashar/Hitler stencil, originally designed by Egyptian street artist el Teneen, one of the first to stencil around Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011, has appeared in Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. Photograph by Pascal Zoghbi, 2012
Syrian protester Jamal al Fatwa’s last Facebook entry before he was arrested. His corpse was returned to his family after he died under torture
