Opening of the Exhibition on June 4, 6 – 7.30pm.
Admission is free but you need to register at (http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3603222335/eorg)
The exhibition is curated by Malu Halasa, Aram Tahhan, Leen Zyiad and Donatella Delle Ratta
Event features a conversation with the cartoonist Ali Ferzat and one of the exhibition’s curators Malu Halasa, and a performance by Syrian dancer and choreographer Eyas AlMokdad.
In a season of Arab springs from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, the pointedly perceptive cartoons by the Syrian artist Ali Ferzat have greater relevance than ever before. His drawings and caricatures transcend barriers of language and nationality and encourage new insights into the abuse of power, corruption of state control and aspirations for freedom. At once amusing and disturbing, Ferzat’s distinctive imagery displays a visual vocabulary long sharpened from decades of avoiding the censor.
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Like the political art taking place inside and outside the country, many of the participants in the exhibition Culture in Defiance: Continuing Traditions of Satire, Art and the Struggle for Freedom in Syria are anonymous. The finger puppets of Masasit Mati, the artists’ group behind Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator and the poster-makers Alshaab Alsori Aref Tarekh (“The Syrian People Know Their Way”) challenge nearly fifty years of unwavering Ba’athist propaganda. The artists in the collective Art and Freedom who have been drawing, painting and sculpting the revolution sign their work in solidarity with the Syrian people. While artist Khalil Younes captures the iconographic nature of their courage with verve and channeled rage. Leading Syrian writer Rafik Shami lends his voice to the fray, as new bands and rappers use the internet to disseminate ideas that are deemed illegal at home. To paraphrase Jameel, the masked director of Top Goon, everything that is scary can be dealt with through laughter, beauty and human resolve.
