“I grew up with the awareness of the Palestinian struggle, but it was not until the outbreak of the Syrian uprising that I experienced first hand what oppression and injustice really mean.”
Such are the words of Syrian-Palestinian artist Anas Salamah, born in Yarmouk, Damascus, in 1979. A major in Interior Design and Media, his eclectic work includes children’s drawings, graphic design and multimedia creations.
Salamah's work has been deeply affected by the Syrian struggle and the suffering around him. “I now feel that it is my spirit drawing, instead of my hands,” he explained in an interview with Syria Untold.
The need for expression ignited by daily events on the ground also influenced the artist's working process, which gradually evolved into a sort of documentation of reality with the resources at his disposal.
“I used coffee grounds in one of my paintings. Every time I made coffee, I would used the remnants to continue working, day by day, until the piece was finished. I called it ‘Coffee Remnants’.”
In the words of the artist, Syrian art has reached a point of close identification with death. “I could hear the shelling outside while I worked on a painting. I kept wondering if I would be able to finish it, or if this would be my last.”
Shelling also made it to Salamah's canvas. He continued drawing as he heard the bombs fall and ambulance sirens wail, during one of the massacres that took place in his neighborhood.
“When there is a shelling, houses become coffins,” he said. Houses reduced to rubble, bodies of martyrs filling walls and floors, and the fear and anguish of death are all vividly captured in his work.
The increasing pressure on Yarmouk deeply affected Salamah, who attempted to break the siege and enter the camp with a group of friends, only to find it completely sealed off by the regime. The humanitarian tragedy caused by the shelling and the starvation imposed on the people of Yarmouk - as well as on other neighborhoods such as Moaddamia - and the inability to act upon it, led him to leave Syria.
Most of the paintings Salamah has worked on since he left the country are black and white. “I left my colors in Syria,” he assured.
