Echoes of Trauma and Identity in Syrian Contemporary Art
This feature was commissioned and published by Dubai Collection on November 29, 2024
The practices of Fateh Moudarres and Safwan Dahoul are almost half a century apart. Whilst the artists share obvious connections to the Syrian cultural and social landscape, their works resonate with universal themes of existentialism, trauma, and national identity.
by Anna Seaman
Safwan Dahoul, undated from the 'Reve Series' from Dubai Collection. Courtesy Zina Khair and Majd Suleiman Collection.
In a soft, generous armchair, the female protagonist sits. But this is not a scene of comfort. She is hunched over, with awkwardly crossed arms and legs making her disproportionate body seem too big for the chair. The back of her head touches the top of the canvas, and her toes are swallowed by its base. This is a scene of wearied sadness and isolation.
The painting is by Syrian artist Safwan Dahoul from his Reve Series. It is undated, which adds to its poignancy because the melancholy captured in Dahoul’s haunting, monochromatic compositions, is timeless and universal.
Since 1987, Dahoul has painted the same woman, in the same subdued colour palette upon thousands of canvases, all titled with the word ‘dream’ or the French equivalent (reve). Much commentary has been conjectured upon his practice but nearly all conclude that these paintings are not derived from his dreams, but titled so as to leave room for interpretation.
In 2014, when I visited the artist at his Dubai studio for an article in The National he told me: “The first time I painted her I called [the work] Dream because I didn’t want to have to explain it. I didn’t know then that it was going to be part of a series or that she would stay with me for the rest of my life.” He went on to describe her as a narrator, who helps him to write his daily journals but with whom he also converses.
Safwan Dahoul, Dream 112, 2016 from Dubai Colection. Courtesy the Ghada Kunash & Hamid Collection.
Born in Hama, Syria in 1961, Dahoul trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus before travelling to Belgium, where he earned a doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has developed his contemporary use of figuration in this single figure to create a metaphor for psychological tension and the subconscious sense of enclosure played out in Syria and the wider region over many generations.
Although this is not exclusively a Syrian story, Dahoul’s stylistic trajectory calls to mind the practice of another prominent Syrian. Fateh Moudarres, undoubtedly one of Syria’s most important modernists, was profoundly affected by oppression, war, displacement, and suffering. Although nearly 40 years older than Dahoul, Moudarres visual language has many resonances with his later counterpart. Both artists capture grief and loneliness to reflect the psychic terrain of the region. Moudarres frequently painted his subjects within tight, claustrophobic compositions, surrounded by muted, barren landscapes or abstract, confining shapes that seem to hem them in.
Fateh Moudarres, Untitled, undated from Dubai Collection. From the private collection of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
Born in 1922 near Aleppo, Moudarres lived in a rural area, which informed the colours and textures in his paintings. He had a difficult childhood; his father was killed when he was young, and he grew up around displacement and scarcity. In later life, two of his children died prematurely. This personal sorrow and loss translated into an empathy for the plight of the marginalized and his critique of injustice is woven into his canvases, which are characterized by figures, often trapped by the hand that life dealt them.
In the 1950s, Moudarres studied in Italy at the Accademia di Belle Arti Roma and, upon his return, the agricultural crisis of the 1960s forced him out of the countryside to Damascus – a city that was rapidly growing and where cramped and sometimes hostile urban conditions were compounded by the political and social unrest sweeping the Arab World. At this point, his art education prompted him to look to his ancient past. His figures with square-shaped heads are inspired by Sumerian and Assyrian statues and the figures in Palmyrene frescos, as well as by early Christian iconography. His use of Christian motifs, such as crosses, halos, and figures resembling saints, reflect both his Christian heritage and Syrian history. Moudarres blended these symbols with Surrealism to comment on broader human experiences, including suffering, displacement, and spirituality. Throughout his life Moudarres, who was also a prolific poet and writer, continued his interest in Surrealism and Existentialism to mine the subconscious as a tool for inspiration. Thorough his literature, as well as his art, he contemplates the complexities of existence and universal truths.
Whilst his experiments with colour and form vary from Dahoul’s monochromatic practice but they both rely on symbolic imagery to distill human emotions into simple yet powerful compositions, addressing themes of destruction and survival.
Fateh Moudarres, Levant Borders, 1997 from Dubai Collection. From the private collection of His Excellency Abdul Rahman bin Mohammed Al Owais
A 1997 work Levant Borders, depicts an abstracted figure with outstretched arms amid an architectural landscape of curved, unstable blue buildings, punctuated by red window-shaped blocks. The Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) greatly impacted Moudarres and this piece displays how the artist continued to link his personal tragedies and pain with the many political events and social tragedies that he witnessed during his life.
Dahoul was exiled by war - moving to Dubai in 2012 as the Syrian Civil War took hold. He too fuses personal and communal tragedy. “A human endures everything — sadness, happiness, longing, and the dream," he told Arab News in 2020. "I’ve said that I’m somewhat like a person who holds an invisible camera, capturing the human moments of a person. In the end, this person could be me. With this camera, I would like to document, in all possibilities, the life of this person.”*
Moudarres’ landscapes encapsulate both his keen interest in Mesopotamian past as well as artistic movements of the 20th century and are imbued with earthy tones from his rural childhood but they, like Dahoul’s speak to a universal viewer. There are moments in his practice however, of hope. The Black Sun and Birth (1972) made with oil paint and sand, shows a small child-like figure emerging from the breast of another; a rebirth occurring under a sun blackened by tragedy. His figures too, are rarely alone. In this way, Dahoul’s paintings are bleaker and lonelier, marking an era that is perhaps even more fragmented than the unrest that swept through Moudarres’ lifetime. There is one constant in these deeply emotional and symbolic practices: the challenge to navigate the human psyche and grapple with notions of identity in times of conflict and upheaval. This is something that continues to resonate to the present day.
Fateh Moudarres, The Black Sun and Birth, 1972 from Dubai Collection. Courtesy of The Khair Art Collection.