Leila Lak
On the 5th September 2011, Tammam Azzam’s life changed forever. At the age of 30, the Syrian artist was forced to flee his homeland and start a life in exile.
“I was working on a series in Damascus before I left, it was called the laundry series, which required me picking clothes from the streets of Damascus and making collages. But that all ended when I moved to Dubai,” said Azzam over Skype from Dubai. “I don’t care about the people here (in Dubai) like I do my own people.”
Azzam was catapulted into international fame when his work entitled “Freedom Graffiti” went viral on social media. He superimposed Klimt’s “The Kiss” onto a photograph of a destroyed Syrian building. “The Kiss”, a painting of two lovers strewn in a kiss surrounded by Byzantine golden surroundings, is a wonderful image of love, lust and joy, something very far away from the blown out buildings in Syria. This picture was the last of a series of photographs he created using famous paintings.
“It all started with Goya’s statement about his painting “The 3rd May, 1808” in Spain, he said that 80 people were killed on that one day on the streets of Spain,” said Azzam. “In our country we have the 3rd May every day. So that got me thinking how I do an artistic statement with feeling about what everyone sees everyday.”
With this idea he started choosing iconic paintings related to the same theme, the “Mona Lisa”, “The Scream” and then came “The Kiss”. Assam was already an established artist in his home country initially working as an oil painter and slowly moving into graphic design he says to generate an income. Things changed after the start of the uprisings in the Arab world.
“You see things you never imagined you would see. Like death around you every day, and that becomes normal,” he said after the start of the uprising he became a different person.
Even after four years he feels largely disconnected from Dubai, it’s a place where his home and studio are but his inspiration still comes from Syria.
“It’s not that I miss Syria, I recognise that I have to arrange a new future, but I can’t see myself here,” he said. “I work all the time and have so many projects but I can’t find my material here.”
He sees himself as primarily a graffiti artist and he is limited in his choice of craft as graffiti is strictly banned in Dubai. Instead Azzam makes stencils in his studio and sends it abroad where his work is displayed on buildings in different cities, most recently Sarajevo. “My dream is to see my work for real in my own country,” he added.
He is sure he will not be able to return to his country at least for 10 years, he fears the situation is deteriorating day by day, with international powers using Syria for their own means. In the meantime he keeps the dream of his country alive in the stories he tells his eight-year old daughter. He and his wife spend time trying to explain the situation to her, and although close-by, Dubai seems a world away so Azzam says it’s difficult to explain how bad life can be, when nothing is bad in Dubai.
Azzam’s new work will be exhibited in a solo show at Ayyam Gallery, Dubai in January.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Leila Lak is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and chief journalist of Revista Diaspora.