Brian Kennedy discusses his 2010 trip to Syria, where he visited artist-led projects and galleries, and his recent experience attempting to bring Syrian artists to Northern Ireland.
I first went to Syria in November
2010 to make a visual study of the Dead Cities. These are the remains of towns
and villages from the Eight and Ninth Centuries: wonderful examples of
Byzantine architecture that have remained remarkably intact. They are typical of the country’s rich heritage
and offer a real life understanding of its history. Having remained complete for so long, they
are now being subjected to modern warfare; their rich contribution to our
knowledge of a past era is being lost forever.
Sadly, this is true of many important sites and places of historic
interest across this fascinating country, which has always been an important
crossroads between East and West, between cultures and religions.
Another site I visited, now
suffering the effects of modern warfare, was the Krac des Chevaliers, considered
to be the finest example of a crusader fort, once considered almost impregnable,
has already been damaged.
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| Palmyra, Syria ©Victor Sloan, 2010 |
I remember standing shivering in the
cold desert night air at the ancient Roman site Palmyra, waiting for the early
rays of sunlight to turn the sandstone buildings their famous shade of gold.
Palmyra is as far east as the Romans ever built a town or trading centre: they
realised the never-ending desert beyond was too vast to be controlled. The Free
Syrian Army are now dug into this important site, based in an ancient castle
that overlooks these historic remains.
Syria is a vast living museum. One just has to walk around to experience the
culture that is interwoven with everyday life, and there is a tangable sense of
history that I had never experienced before.
The country has its museums but it is simply better to walk around the
streets soaking up the atmosphere. Both
Aleppo and Damascus claim to be the oldest cities in the world and I was
certainly aware of an ancient culture and long history when in either city.
The current violence broke out just
a few months before I visited Syria but there was absolutely no hint of what
was to come. At the time I was
interested in seeing what contemporary art practice existed against the long
cultural history of that country.
In Damascus I visited AllArtNow
which lies inside the ancient city walls and in an area where the Christian,
Muslim and Jewish quarters used to border each other and people lived together
in relative harmony. The building that houses
AllArtNow is an old decaying house with several rooms closed off as they are
unsafe. Like many initiatives driven by
young artists making a way for themselves, it felt full of energy. The organisation often uses alternative
venues around the city to stage events and it also has links with international
organisations like the British Council, Centre Culturel Francais and the
Goethe-Institut.
Because of their links to foreign embassies and their diplomatic
significance, these organisations and their venues were less likely to be
hassled by the authorities.
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| Serjilla, south of Aleppo, Syria ©Victor Sloan, 2010 |
After Damascus, I travelled to
Aleppo where I met Issa Touma, a photographer and director of Le Pont gallery,
the first photographic gallery in the Middle East. As well as the gallery space, Issa often uses
a large adjacent space that used to be Aleppo’s electricity generating
plant. The Women’s Art Festival which
covered all art forms was regularly shown here.
It must be remembered that many Syrians consider their society secular
and I found it interesting that artists were encouraged to deal with women’s
issues.
Just a few months after I returned
from Syria, the violence started. I kept
in touch with AllArt Now and Le Pont by Skype and email. Both organisations continued to organise
exhibitions. It was still possible to
travel at this time; Issa did a lecture tour of Europe and Nisrine Boukhari, an
artist from AllArtNow, also travelled to Europe to make work. But slowly the
situation got worse. Then, in February
this year, the British Council introduced a special scheme that allowed Syrian
artists to travel to Britain to meet other artists. Nisrine Boukhari and the curator Abir
Boukhari, both from AllArtNow in Damascus, were given funding as was Issa Touma
and a group of photographers from Aleppo.
For whatever bureaucratic reasons, Abir and Nisrine were given visas but
everyone from Aleppo was denied a visa. So, even though the initiative was
being sponsored by the British Council, the British Embassy decided to deny visas
to the majority of the artists.
While I was annoyed that all the
planning, working out itineraries and almost booking airline tickets was for
nothing, Issa was furious. He had made several lectures tours to Britain and
Europe before talking on subjects that would
not have gone down well with his own government, and felt that after years of
doing this he had been badly let down.
I could do nothing but plan the trip
for those who did have visas, Nisrine and Abir. Soon after their arrival we
started with the ‘tourist’ trip. Our
driver Billy certainly had ‘views’ about the Troubles, the current situation
and how to solve everything. While visiting
the ‘peace wall’ our guests experienced Belfast humour: Abir was writing
something in Arabic on the wall and this wee Belfast man, out walking his dog,
came up and asked where she was from.
When told she was from Syria he went up to the wall to look at Ibir’s
Arabic writing and, with a straight face looked at her and said ‘Well your
spelling is good anyway’.
,+near+Aleppo,+Syria+%C2%A9Victor+Sloan.jpeg) |
| Saint Simeon's basilica (Qalaat Sam'aan), near Aleppo, Syria ©Victor Sloan, 2010 |
The studio visits were enlivened by
the idea of virtual residencies. Nisrine had been offered a residency in
Ramallah but, coming from Syria, it was impossible to get a visa to go to the
West Bank, so she did a virtual residency with the organisation in
Palestine. The final, and perhaps the
visit that had most impact on Nisrine and Abir, was to ‘Draw Down the
Walls’. This organisation was started in
one community in Belfast but its success meant that the other community soon
saw the positive possibilities. It
engages with young people - its aims are intervention, prevention and planning -
and attempts to manage any possibly violent situations.
It is common now to say that Belfast
and Northern Ireland are in a post-conflict situation, but Brendan who works on
the Draw Down the Walls project, still feels he is in a conflict situation. It
is just the means to an end that has changed.
Both Brendan and Ian gave an enlightening tour of some of the
flash-points in their part of Belfast, places where, if a local youth was seen
writing on the wall, it’s more likely that they would be pulled in by the
police than have someone crack a joke with them.
So, what can contemporary art offer
a new Syria? Art is often at its best when it has a reason for existence and
playing a part in the regeneration of this troubled country is a very real
reason. The fact that some galleries
have continued to exist will provide a platform for this debate and continued
contact with international organisations and artists will widen its scope. New
media, which became such a crucial tool in the Arab Spring uprisings, has
facillitated this dilogue and helped deepen our understanding of what it means
to practice as an artist in contemporary Syria. The rolethat contemporary art
will playin Syria’s future remains to be seen.
Brian Kennedy is an artist who also
curates and writes about art. He sees all these elements as part of one
practice. For over 10 years, travel has formed an integral part of his practice.
When not travelling he lives in his small cottage outside Belfast
The Visual Artists News Sheet, November - December 2012
