Marwan's exhibition reminder of Syria's cultural destruction
The Syrian-born artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi, known simply as Marwan, is preparing for his first solo exhibition in the Arabian Gulf, highlighting the endangered cultural history of his homeland.
In numerous corners of the Arab world, modern and historic artifacts are at best being neglected and at worst being destroyed. Libya, Iraq, Palestine and Algeria have all suffered conflict in the past few decades, but none more so than Syria, which has seen centuries-old communities, markets, architecture and art that took years, sometimes decades, to construct suffer decimation in a matter of months from regime and rebel artillery. In Syria, after the weapons are laid down and the foreign mercenaries depart, it will be the Syrians themselves who rebuild the country.
Until this tragic civil war ends, the outside world can support the documentation, archiving, preservation and promotion of Syrian culture so that the invading Islamic State (IS) fighters and foreign mercenaries do not succeed in erasing the culturally rich recent past and replace it with its own nefarious version. In that spirit, this past summer the opportunity presented itself to support the young architect Khaled Malas in representing Syria at the Venice Architecture Biennial with his project “Excavating the Sky.” Even in these dark moments, it is essential that culturally rich and diverse Syria remains alive and present in our minds and that the image molded by extremists is prevented from displacing it.
Another Syria is also receiving deserved attention in the art world. Earlier this year, I traveled to Berlin to meet with the Syrian-born artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi and to visit his studio. In an apartment in the Tiergarten area of the city, I found myself enthralled by his work, as if I had walked into a cave of treasures.
“This series I produced after I had just arrived in Germany, in the 1960s, when I worked in a tannery,” Marwan, 80, recounted, pointing to it with a hand also holding a cigarette. “I used to work all day and paint all night.”
