Syrian artists explore themes of forgiveness in Damascus exhibition
For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @arabnews.lifestyle
'The Path,' a two-week exhibition curated by the Madad Art Foundation and staged in the once-abandoned skeletal Massar Rose Building in Damascus, confronted Syria's pain, but, curator Marwan Tayara stressed: 'This is not about politics. It's about healing.'
Tayara — who co-founded Madad alongside the late Buthayna Ali, a fine arts professor whose vision of a show on forgiveness inspired 'The Path' — continued: 'For us, the artist is a patriot. The bakery feeds the body, and art feeds the soul. The soldier fights for his country, and so does the artist — but with ideas, with beauty.'
Ali, who died in September, had envisioned a show that would offer something softer than some of Madad's previous exhibitions around topics including war and disaster. 'She wanted to make an exhibition about forgiveness but never had the chance,' artist Rala Tarabishi told Arab News. 'We decided to do it as a gift for her — and for Syria.'
Even the venue was part of the show's message. 'This is a construction site,' said Tayara. 'It's symbolic. Syria is unfinished. But we're building. Art has to be part of that process — not just rebuilding walls, but rebuilding identity.'
Tarabishi's installation, 'Embed,' was a forest of resin swords frozen mid-fall, through which visitors could walk. 'When I embed my sword into the earth during a fight, I'm putting an end to it — in the most peaceful way,' she said. But none of the swords in 'Embed' had yet reached that point. 'The closer the sword is to the ground, the closer I am to forgetting, or forgiving,' Tarabishi explained. 'Some things are harder to let go of.'
For viewers, she hoped, it would be 'as if the swords are memories or people who caused them pain. I wanted them to lean more into forgiveness, so they could live a more peaceful life.'
But for Tarabishi, forgiveness is anything but simple. 'It's very hard. Some things feel too big for us to truly forgive, so we just coexist with our pain instead.'
Eyad Dayoub's installation, 'Crossing,' was equally visceral. Suspended black and red wires hung like fishing nets. 'Each level represents a period in Syria — full of darkness and blood,' Dayoub said. 'The material looks like something that traps fish. I feel like I've been hunted by my country. I'm stuck — I can't leave it, and I can't love it either.'
Creating the piece was part-therapy, part-confrontation. 'Our dreams were lost. But I'm trying to find love again between me and my country,' he continued, adding that some visitors wept when he explained the symbolism of the piece. 'People are ready to feel again. After war, we became numb. But I see us becoming sensitive again.'
If Dayoub's wires evoked entrapment, Judi Chakhachirou's work addressed instability. Her installation featured a trembling platform — a metaphor for emotional imbalance. 'When someone hasn't forgiven you — or you haven't forgiven them — you feel unstable. You don't know what's wrong, but you're not OK,' she said.
Her piece was a message to the living: 'Take your chances now. Don't leave people in your life hurt. Forgive — or at least try. Because one day, it'll be too late.'
The war has buried so much in silence, she added, that emotions — even tears — feel like progress. 'Some people cried when they saw it. Others said it made them feel calm, like they finally understood what was bothering them,' she said. 'I hope my next work will be more hopeful.'
For Mariam Al-Fawal, forgiveness is less emotional and more philosophical. Her interactive installation, 'A Delicate Balance,' draws on Karl Popper's formulation of the paradox of tolerance. Visitors can rearrange its colored puzzle pieces on wooden stands to construct a final, diverse pattern.
'If you tolerate all ideologies — including the intolerant — you destroy tolerance itself,' Al-Fawal explained. 'Without exclusion, there can be no true inclusion. To see the full picture, you have to flip the pieces, adjust them. That's how people work too. You can't have one color, one shape; you have to embrace difference.'
Al-Fawal's puzzle asks viewers to build balance. 'People interacted with it differently,' she said, 'But most walked away with a shifted perspective. That's why I made it interactive: the process carries the message.'
Lamia Saida contributed 'To Memory, Once More,' which consisted of a set of blood-red, burned and shredded canvases suspended like raw meat.
'I thought if I wanted to express these memories visually, it had to be meat,' she explained. 'That's what they feel like. That's why they hang. That's why they bleed.'
Syria's trauma, for Saida, is not abstract —it is textured, fleshy, and inescapable. And yet, through art, it is manageable. 'Art is more than therapy,' she continued. 'When I make something honest, I feel like I forgive people. I find stability.'
Her final painting is a single, steady line. 'It's the calm I reached after expressing everything else,' she said.
More than 400 visitors visited the exhibition daily, according to the organizers. Some brought questions. Some brought grief. Others brought quiet. 'Even political officials came,' Tayara said. 'Not to control. Just to understand.'
What started as a tribute to a beloved teacher has become a mirror for the country. 'All Syrians have this memory of grief,' said Tarabishi. 'Whether from war or daily life — it's what binds us.'
Madad hopes to bring 'The Path' to other cities too.
'We believe in the power of art,' said Tayara. 'It won't rebuild Syria alone. But it might rebuild the spirit. That's where everything begins.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
3 days ago
- Arab News
Manal AlDowayan discusses taking her project ‘Thikra' on tour
BEIRUT: The contemporary dance performance 'Thikra,' designed by Saudi contemporary artist Manal AlDowayan and English dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, was orginally staged as a site-specific piece for the AlUla Arts Festival earlier this year. It has now been adapted and is currently touring Europe, with upcoming shows in Spain, Luxembourg, France, England, Italy and Germany. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ AlDowayan admits that, through 'Thikra,' she's 'been bitten by the theater bug,' thanks to its collaborative process and live audience interaction. It has become an exciting new space for her creative expression. 'I don't (normally) have an audience experience,' Al Dowayan tells Arab News. 'In the theater world… you bow and they clap and there's a standing ovation… the curtain goes down and the clapping doesn't stop.' At the heart of 'Thikra' — and AlDowayan's broader creative mission — is the act of storytelling, especially as a tool for cultural preservation. 'My work is a narrative biography of who I am and the experiences I've faced moving through this world,' AlDowayan tells Arab News. 'We were sitting around a lone bush in the desert and I thought: 'This is it. This is the location (in which to set 'Thikra'),'' she recalls. '(The show is set in) a circle, inspired by how we sit around fires and tell oral histories.' For AlDowayan, storytelling holds particular weight for women, whose voices have historically been marginalized. She strives to resurrect narratives that have been silenced or erased. 'It started from feminist thinking — women's presence in public spaces and the idea of erasure: your name, your identity,' she says. AlDowayan says she is eager to further explore theater as a medium for her work. 'Using the human body as a conduit of expressing a creative idea… that's deeply inspiring for me,' she says. And her interest in performance as an artform is not just about creative growth; it's also about redefining cultural narratives. 'I don't think Saudi Arabia — or artists and creatives from Saudi Arabia — should be excluded from the global language of creativity,' AlDowayan concludes.
Arab News
4 days ago
- Arab News
The reflective rise of Saudi-American musician Reef Loretto
DHAHRAN: Although he lives in Los Angeles, Saudi-American songwriter and producer Reef Loretto traces the roots of his sound back to Dhahran, where he spent his childhood surrounded by extended family, hazy radio frequencies from across the causeway in Bahrain, and the early digital tools that would quietly shape his path. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ 'My mom was from Dammam. My dad was from New York State. I grew up in Dhahran — my whole childhood was there,' Loretto tells Arab News. 'I grew up around a lot of family and got involved in music at a pretty young age. My earliest introduction was piano lessons around first grade. I had two teachers in particular that helped a lot with getting started.' Outside the classroom, his cousins formed an informal band of their own. 'A lot of my cousins got into playing music at a pretty young age. All of us would practice on our own and then we would meet up and jam.' He clearly recalls the excitement of his first attempt at creating a song of his own. 'Things changed a lot when I got into original stuff — songwriting and digital production. The summer after eighth grade was when I first started trying to record things and capture ideas using a computer,' he says. 'I remember very vividly the first time I had something on my computer that I felt good about. I was, like, 'OK, I have a song! I want to record it. I want to turn it into something I can play on CD.' I had it on the laptop, but I didn't know how to export it at the time.' Growing up in Dhahran came with creative limitations — access to gear and knowledge was difficult, even instruments were hard to find, and very expensive. 'At the time not much was happening, right? It was hard to go out and buy an instrument or equipment,' he says. 'Nobody was really (making music) — at least nobody I knew. It was happening very privately, underground.' Fortunately for Loretto, it was also happening at Desert Designs, a now-defunct creative space in Dhahran where Loretto got to perform with his cousins. It was an easy gig to get — the place was owned by his uncle, Farid Bukhari, and auntie, Qamar Ahmed. Bukhari, he says, would often give him mixes that he'd made on CD. 'Shout out to my uncle and auntie,' he says. 'Honestly, I owe so much appreciation to them for different styles and variety.' A post shared by Saudi Arabia at Expo (@ksaexpo2025) The sounds of his adolescence were a mix of downloads, those mix CDs, and regional radio. 'We were, like, the LimeWire, rock, rap, hip-hop generation,' he says. 'I listened to 96.5 (from Bahrain). I remember them having more interesting stuff in those days.' These days, his main source for musical inspiration is his younger sister, Ruby — an unofficial scout of heartfelt, emerging music. 'She's the one keeping me at the pulse of the new, trendy stuff and what's going on in terms of sound,' he says. 'She's always listening from her heart.' Loretto's current style is ambient and introspective — he describes it as 'feelings-based' — often beginning with extended keyboard textures and expanding slowly, like a memory forming in real time. 'My main instrument is the keyboard. So it'll start with some type of ambient idea, very extended sounds. Think of it like meditation music; introspective, a lot of contemplation. The notion of searching is always embedded in anything that I do,' he says. Earlier this summer, that sound made its way to Japan when Loretto was selected to represent Saudi Arabia at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka. As part of his residency there, Loretto performed with Japanese djembe drummer and vocalist Kackey and Saudi oud player Faisal Alqarni. 'Every day was an exploration. The thing that was interesting — and sometimes nerve-wracking — about it was that the three of us just met up for this,' he says. 'I was expecting more chaos but it was a low-drama experience. All in all, it was really beautiful.' The trio created soundscapes in real time, inspired by ecology, ancestry, and the Red Sea. Loretto also produced visuals that responded live to the sounds. For Loretto, the collaboration was less about fusion and more about humility. 'I actually want to get better at support,' he says. 'I don't want to make fusion. I want to learn to support somebody that's playing in a very authentic, traditional way, in a way that feels cohesive. I'll still always bring my background, right? I can't ever remove myself from that context. But I'm less interested in trying to bring somebody else to where I am, I'm trying to meet somebody where they are. 'I learn from yesterday and support whatever's happening tomorrow in a better and better way,' he adds with a smile.
Arab News
4 days ago
- Arab News
‘I like it hot!': J. Lo sizzles with killer dancing in Abu Dhabi heat
Returning to Abu Dhabi after her stellar performance in February, Jennifer Lopez danced the night away at the Etihad Arena in Yas Island on Tuesday as a part of her 'Up All Night' world tour. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Performing iconic songs including 'On the Floor,' 'Ain't Your Mama' and 'Dance Again,' Lopez sizzled with her high energy and killer dance moves. Although I was disappointed 'Jenny From the Block' did not have its own moment to shine, Lopez still performed her 2002 hit single as a medley with Queen's 'We Will Rock You.' A post shared by Jennifer Lopez (@jlo) To celebrate her 56th year, she sang 'Birthday,' the single released on July 24, which was much appreciated by the crowd. The superstar thanked her fans and urged them to love one another and to pursue what they love. Lopez also joked about the UAE heat. 'I like it hot!' she said, fanning herself. With multiple outfit changes and quick intervals, the show switched from high energy songs to slow ballads and medleys. Lopez paid tribute to her Latin culture and performed some of her hit Spanish songs including 'Que Hiciste' and 'Si Una Vez.' She sang while dancing the flamenco in an outfit inspired by the traditional traje de flamenca, a dress traditionally worn by women at festivals in Andalusia, Spain. The hit singer is no stranger to the Gulf and turned heads in April at the F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah. And last November she hit the stage at the '1001 Seasons of Elie Saab' event in Riyadh.
