While the West turns its bored gaze away from global Christian holocausts, a handful of diaspora artists attempt to catch our attention and move our hearts.
One of these is Syrian immigrant and artist Essa Neima, who shares his concerns, sorrows and fond memories through his paintings. Evidence of Syria's ancient ties to Christianity are evident in most of his work, an important piece of this conflict that is often slighted.
Neima's work was created to show viewers, as his exhibit catalog explains, "a part of Syria the media doesn't seem to have time to show," going beyond the obvious. His art is meant to evoke emotions Syrians feel about the tragedies to their people, the church and their forced repatriations and travails.
For Neima, the fate of Orthodox church art and cultural landmarks are "deaths" just as real as any other. Along with a multitude of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, he deeply mourns them. Seeing that world as "forever lost," he believes the violence and bloodshed have "diminished the human condition" and destroyed art from Syria reaching back countless generations.
Remembering places of worship and the art and furnishings they once held, Neima places visual cues through a series of paintings in his ongoing exhibit "Touch Me Not: Wounds of Palmyra."
From an interview with the Catholic Herald, Neima revealed how his show began with a dream filled with "writing" and a "wise, sad eye" watching him accusingly, as if he should be doing something. After this, he felt compelled to share with the rest of the world the annihilation war was bringing to his culture and heritage.
Jesus commanded "Touch me not" to Mary Magdalene in honor of his transitionally human and perhaps tenuous state, before his permanent resurrection (John 20:17).
"I want to represent all the disrespected people and the art damaged by the violence and say 'Touch me not,'" Neima explains. The verse goes on to say, "for I have not yet returned to my Father." Most Syrian refugees across the world claim they would like to return home to rebuild their nation as well. For now, Neima lives in Washington D.C and works as an adjunct professor of digital art at the University of the District of Columbia.
Neima is inclusive and, although sad, not bitter. Proof is his inclusion of Islamic patterns as well as Christian ones in his "Syrian Iconoclasm." There the "sad eye" of his dream is surrounding by a cloud of religious emblems: crosses as well as the "Khatim Suleyman" or the Islamic seal of the prophets.
They represent the ruined mosques and churches of Syria amid a rusty nebula, the blood of those who were slain there. Crouched in a corner, the face of an Orthodox icon of Mary is obliterated as well.
After the displacements, desecrated and bombed churches and endless murders, Neima wonders if there will be nothing left to prove he ever lived there ... a problem the entire Christian population faces.
Two paintings deal directly with the ongoing bloodshed and injustice in Syria. Motifs and patterns common to historical Syria are featured in "Carpet Of Martyrs," loosely inspired by Syrian carpet design and an allusion to the many Syrian Christians murdered or who otherwise perished in the fray.
"Blue Forgiveness" signals a change in tone, the blood-soaked colors gone. "Blue usually (is) the color of the sadness in the art, so I am making it like blue forgiveness," explains Neima. This painting implies two shadowy figures, one bent in penance near the ground. His brief line for the painting: "I saw it in blue, forgiving who keeps hurting you."
Neima expressed a desire to make peace with himself and the past, forgiving those who harmed him in the past. He lost more than a home, but family members and a beloved spiritual mentor as well.
This is a common refrain from artists and other displaced Syrians, who just want ISIS, various rebels and all the rest to go away so they can go home. Few of art works are overtly political, as they seem to have had enough of politics.
Another artist famously remains in Aleppo, literally walled in with check points and soldiers. Shelled by the faction of the day, it is very dangerous for Issa Touma, a 50-year-old Armenian-Christian photographer and popular art promoter and gallery owner. Touma decided to stay with his gallery and his people, to encourage them and give artists something useful to do while contemplating their possible demise.
Inside Aleppo, Touma remains on the government side of town, where he hopes to be protected by al-Assad's troops. Christians fear the continual encroachment of Qaeda-linked jihadist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, which Western media disingenuously label "moderate" or the Free Army. And then there's the ISIS, which everyone hates.
Going days without electricity and sometimes water, he's managed by sheer tenacity to hold the "12th Aleppo International Photo Festival" in January 2015, while under almost constant bombardment. Few contributing artists could physically attend at the besieged city, but sent things anyway and the show went on. Their admiration for Touma was great and universal.
"People don't only survive by food and water, they survive by art," Touma claimed, and clearly he means it.
Posting to the world from the "dead city of Aleppo," Touma isn't zealously religious or political, but has a clear take on the situation. It doesn't make the Western powers look terrifically noble or very bright.
This is a recent Tweet from Touma (unedited for spelling): ‪"#‎BBC‬‬‬‬ made long report about ‪#‎Palestine‬‬‬‬ after ‪#‎Israel‬‬‬‬ cut the ‪#‎electricity‬‬‬‬ on Palestinian for one hour daily, so what about ‪#‎Aleppo?‬‬ we have electricity only for one hour daily and no one care about .. So I am angry photographer and art gallerist"
To say Touma is fairly disgusted with the reaction of the West to the plight of Christians is an understatement. He mocks our efforts to remove one dictator by creating "100 dictators in every streets & all of them talks in the name of Allah." Or, dozens of weak dictators and calling it "democracy." Touma blames both international democracies and Islamic powers for this.
Other Syrian artists work and do quite well from exile in Lebanon or Europe, but they don't have quite the emotional impact that these lone voices of protest do. While they may create exquisite work, they risk neither themselves as Touma does, nor dare speak against real evil. Yet their subjects are weapons, corpses. Violent imagery abounds, anonymous and inculpable.
Perhaps they feel it isn't the place of artists to assign blame or expose genocide by actual names and faces. Then why not stick to pastorals, abstracts or something non-political if you can't be entirely honest? Surely they've all gone through hell. Yet it seems many artists are encouraged only to go so far, to work out personal anguish and trauma rather than facing the real issue and actors, or vaguely attack bad guys with uniforms and "war."
Well, this is just my opinion.
Issa Touma has his opinion. "Art has to be the best way to build trust between countries."
Essa Neima has his opinion also. "The Syrian society, when I was living there, was ... a liberal society. ... They just want their life to be safe, or they want to raise kids, or to have jobs, like the normal life."
Both Essa and Issa mean "Jesus" in Arabic, a dangerous name to have in much of Syria now.
Neima has shown this work at DuPont Pilgrims Gallery and it is currently at Bistro Boehm at 1727 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC, DC 20009.
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