02/12/2017

The Art of Semaan Khawam



Displaying the art of a Syrian artist, who left for Beirut and is now in London, UK.


Portraits (oil on canvas) and drawings:





Paintings and landscapes:








Words, in French:


-


His work is available; check his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Semaan-Khawam-Art-650398968326816/



-

Introduction, by the Sana Gallery:
http://www.sanagallery.com/semaan-khawam

Semaan Khawam is a Lebanese painter, designer, graffiti artist, actor, writer and poet, born in 1974. His work has been featured at personal or collective exhibitions at, amongst others, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, the Joanna Seikaly art gallery and the Nada Debs gallery. 

In his work, Khawam shows the power of art to challenge official state censorship, sectarianism and limits on freedom of expression in the Middle East.


Albareh Art Gallery:

The self-taught multidisciplinary Khawam is a painter, sculptor, graffiti and installation artist whose work is informed by the daily reality of the city that he lives in.
Khawam’s uses his work to draw attention to political contradictions, social injustice, the lack of cultural appreciation and other uncomfortable  realities.  
Early in 2012, he spray painted an armed soldier on a wall in Gemmayzeh to remind people of the Lebanese Civil War, something that he feels has been forgotten.  
His arrest for this act drew international attention to the limits on free speech and artistic expression that Khawam and other Lebanese artists work within inadvertently but also ironically reinforcing his earlier messages.


Extract from an article:

Semaan Khawam - Bird and Birdman 


"He draws heavily on his Syrian identity, but he is also Lebanese, having spent much of his youth in the city’s hot neighborhoods along the fiery sectarian strife’s demarcation lines of the late 80s and early 90s. Like the community of displaced contemporary Syrian artists that has carved a place within the fabric of the Lebanese capital’s bohemian districts since the beginning of the Syrian crisis two years ago, he grapples with issues of injustice, discrimination, war, totalitarianism, nationalism, and his own identity. 
But his is a world apart from defeatist homilies they produce en masse and that are filling art repositories from Beirut to Dubai. He is restless and defiant, butting his head against institutional and social suppression and daring to raise a finger at a tepid discourse ushering an ever rising tidal rehash of abated artistic performances across the Arab world. An insomniac with an impoverished style and rebellious young looks, he casts himself as the protagonist in his own work."

-

Last words:

“I have never won a single battle against tyranny or oppression, I just turned them into paintings,” Semaan Khawam.

No comments:

Post a Comment