Since the Assad regime fell after more than 50 years in power, the extent of Syria’s cultural isolation is becoming clear. Over the past two decades, as the art market engaged in earnest with Arab modernism, works by Syrian modern artists have become increasingly under-represented.
Of the major Middle East modern and contemporary auctions in the past two years at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, for example, only 3 per cent of the artworks sold – 23 lots out of 706 – were by Syrian artists and eight of those were by one, the Berlin-based Marwan.
Contemporary exhibitions focus on themes of conflict and migration, obscuring the image of a prosperous and connected Syria in which major modern artists such as Louay Kayyali, Fateh Moudarres and Mahmoud Hammad emerged.
In academic conferences and publications, work on Syria is often absent.
“The impact of the Baath party has been incredible in terms of isolating Syria on every level – culturally, artistically, economically, politically, even socially,” says Shireen Atassi, who runs the Atassi Foundation. Based in Dubai since 2012, the Atassi Foundation is the major collection and repository of Syrian art and artistic archives. They commission scholarship and exhibitions, contesting the growing sense that Syrian art is separate to the rest of the region.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Syrian art was at the forefront of pan-Arabism, and Syrian artists showed and collaborated with Lebanese, Egyptian and Iraqi counterparts. The first First Arab Conference of Fine Arts was held in Damascus in 1971 and it was artists from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon who founded the Union of Arab Plastic Artists that same year. Painters such as Mahmoud Hammad developed calligraphic works known as hurufiyya, alongside similar experiments in Lebanon and Iraq. Moudarres used his work after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War to support the Palestinian cause and called Beirut his second home.
“There would be no Lebanese modernism without Syrian modernism,” says the curator and researcher Maymanah Farhat. “In the modern Lebanese history that's being written and documented in books and exhibitions, there isn't enough attention paid to the symbiotic relationship that Damascus and Beirut had in the 1950s and '60s. You had someone like Fateh Moudarres, who's so important to Damascus, but also to Beirut. Or someone like Marwan, who is absolutely crucial to the development of art in Lebanon, as much as he is at the development of art in Damascus. Historians right now are blindsided by these borders.”
After Hafez Al Assad took power in 1971, he began a project of retrenchment that slowly drew Syrian artists away from international collaboration. Starting in the 1980s, Syrians required a permit merely to travel abroad and the number of foreign exhibitions plummeted. While there was a brief opening of restrictions in the 2000s – which coincided with the internet making information more freely available to artists – since the civil war started, Syria’s seclusion became only more entrenched.
The contemporary art scene suffered and most artists moved abroad. But modern artists, many of whom were older or who lived on through their archives, were less mobile. For reasons no one can pinpoint, each individually surmountable but adding up to a blockade, Syrian modernism receded from view.
There was little institutional support in Syria during its modern heyday, compared to countries such as Iraq or Egypt. Artists’ works entered private collections but there was no public repository responsible for supporting the cultural scene. While there was a prolific amount of writing on art from within Syria, it was generally in Arabic – and many current art historians, even of Arab art, do not read the language.
Archives became difficult to access, making it hard to research artists or to establish the provenance of a painting. As a result, fakes frequently circulated, spooking potential collectors and driving prices down. While works by Kayyali and Marwan led sales in the first wave of market interest in Middle Eastern art, particularly at the Christie’s auctions in Dubai in the 2000s, today their numbers have dwindled.
The decline at market had a ripple effect. It is an open secret in the art world that the market drives scholarship, as auction houses need to verify the provenance and veracity of the artworks they sell. They regularly consult academics and can be some of the first to commission research on a subject.
In the worst-case scenario, artworks can enter a doom spiral, where museums worry about the authenticity of a certain set of paintings, keeping them out of major narratives and therefore further reducing the amount of scholarship and public knowledge about them.
And modern Syrian art has had no vocal international champion nor major show. Atassi highlights the transformative power of an exhibition such as Art et Liberte, organised by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath in 2016 and 2017, which brought international attention to the previously little-known movement of Surrealism in Egypt.
“These are all little things,” she says. “But they all come together.”
What’s next?
The recession of Syria from Arab art history is not total. The scholar Anneka Lenssen, who teaches at UC-Berkeley, published an acclaimed study of Syrian modernism in 2020 called Beautiful Agitation. The Syrian artist and scholar Nagham Hodaifa, who wrote her doctorate on Syrian art, says she is increasingly receiving inquiries from potential students. But it is an important reminder of the effects of war and conflict on the supposedly objective histories laid out in museums.
It is too much to say that with the regime change in Syria, its art history will begin to be reconsidered – most notably because no one knows what the government of Ahmad Al Shara will bring.
And much is already being done. In the period since the revolution, a shadow civil society has developed in the diaspora, with many individual-led projects taking responsibility for the country’s history – from Mnemonic, which records human rights abuse, to the Syrian Cassette Archive, which documents a period of popular music.
Late last year, the Atassi Foundation launched the Modern Art of Syria Archive, an online, searchable archive of thousands that will be entirely publicly available. They comprise the records of the Atassi Gallery, which Shireen’s mother Mona ran from the 1980s to 2010 in Homs and later Damascus. They contain, among other gems, recorded discussions between Moudarres and the poet Adonis at the Galerie Atassi, for which the lines stretched around the block. The archive also includes the records of Hammad and Leila Nseir, and they are hoping to set up a digital preservation studio in Damascus.
Increased access to material will, ideally, allow for further research into the full breadth of Syrian art history.
It’s not going to be a sharp change, Atassi points out. “It's just going to be a curve and there's going to be more traffic coming in," she says. "But we need multiple voices. History needs different perspectives.”
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ICC Awards for 2021
MEN
Cricketer of the Year – Shaheen Afridi (Pakistan)
T20 Cricketer of the Year – Mohammad Rizwan (Pakistan)
ODI Cricketer of the Year – Babar Azam (Pakistan)
Test Cricketer of the Year – Joe Root (England)
WOMEN
Cricketer of the Year – Smriti Mandhana (India)
ODI Cricketer of the Year – Lizelle Lee (South Africa)
T20 Cricketer of the Year – Tammy Beaumont (England)
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Europa League final
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World Cup League Two
Results
Oman beat Nepal by 18 runs
Oman beat United States by six wickets
Nepal beat United States by 35 runs
Oman beat Nepal by eight wickets
Fixtures
Tuesday, Oman v United States
Wednesday, Nepal v United States
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Results
Men's finals
45kg:Duc Le Hoang (VIE) beat Zolfi Amirhossein (IRI) points 29-28. 48kg: Naruephon Chittra (THA) beat Joseph Vanlalhruaia (IND) TKO round 2.
51kg: Sakchai Chamchit (THA) beat Salam Al Suwaid (IRQ) TKO round 1. 54kg: Veerasak Senanue (THA) beat Huynh Hoang Phi (VIE) 30-25.
57kg: Almaz Sarsembekov (KAZ) beat Tak Chuen Suen (MAC) RSC round 3. 60kg: Yerkanat Ospan (KAZ) beat Ibrahim Bilal (UAE) 30-27.
63.5kg: Abil Galiyev (KAZ) beat Nouredine Samir (UAE) 29-28. 67kg: Narin Wonglakhon (THA) beat Mohammed Mardi (UAE) 29-28.
71kg: Amine El Moatassime (UAE) w/o Shaker Al Tekreeti (IRQ). 75kg: Youssef Abboud (LBN) w/o Ayoob Saki (IRI).
81kg: Ilyass Habibali (UAE) beat Khaled Tarraf (LBN) 29-28. 86kg: Ali Takaloo (IRI) beat Emil Umayev (KAZ) 30-27.
91kg: Hamid Reza Kordabadi (IRI) beat Mohamad Osaily (LBN) RSC round 1. 91-plus kg: Mohammadrezapoor Shirmohammad (IRI) beat Abdulla Hasan (IRQ) 30-27.
Women's finals
45kg: Somruethai Siripathum (THA) beat Ha Huu Huynh (VIE) 30-27. 48kg: Thanawan Thongduang (THA) beat Colleen Saddi (PHI) 30-27.
51kg: Wansawang Srila Or (THA) beat Thuy Phuong Trieu (VIE) 29-28. 54kg: Ruchira Wongsriwo (THA) beat Zeinab Khatoun (LBN) 30-26.
57kg: Sara Idriss (LBN) beat Zahra Nasiri Bargh (IRI) 30-27. 60kg: Kaewrudee Kamtakrapoom (THA) beat Sedigheh Hajivand (IRI) TKO round 2.
63.5kg: Nadiya Moghaddam (IRI) w/o Reem Al Issa (JOR).
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- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Du Football Champions
The fourth season of du Football Champions was launched at Gitex on Wednesday alongside the Middle East’s first sports-tech scouting platform.“du Talents”, which enables aspiring footballers to upload their profiles and highlights reels and communicate directly with coaches, is designed to extend the reach of the programme, which has already attracted more than 21,500 players in its first three years.
What is Reform?
Reform is a right-wing, populist party led by Nigel Farage, a former MEP who won a seat in the House of Commons last year at his eighth attempt and a prominent figure in the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union.
It was founded in 2018 and originally called the Brexit Party.
Many of its members previously belonged to UKIP or the mainstream Conservatives.
After Brexit took place, the party focused on the reformation of British democracy.
Former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson became its first MP after defecting in March 2024.
The party gained support from Elon Musk, and had hoped the tech billionaire would make a £100m donation. However, Mr Musk changed his mind and called for Mr Farage to step down as leader in a row involving the US tycoon's support for far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson who is in prison for contempt of court.
