Syria: Catastrophe and Hope presents selected artworks of a seminal Syrian painter, Mahmoud Aljawabra, created between 1974 and 2024. One of the first Syrian artists who received formal art education, belonging to the fourth generation of Syrian modernists, Aljawabra emerged to be widely exhibited in Syria and beyond since the 1980s. While most of his pre-2011 artworks have been lost or destroyed due to the Syrian War, many of them have found their home in international and local art collections. Others are exhibited in this presentation, being Aljawabra’s first show in the Arabian Gulf.

 

Aljawabra’s practice was inevitably determined by the critical period in Syria’s history – one filled with ever-present brutality, despair and change. Thus, his artworks depict wars and often violent myths, highlighting the intense transformations of Syrian society and providing a multifaceted (and often phantasmagorical) perspective on Syria’s contemporary tragedy. In this exhibition, Aljawabra acts as a witness and a narrator of the Syrian stories of fear and trauma, stories he has lived and continues to live, awaiting salvation. Created using colours, symbols and signs, and evoking a sense of ambiguity characteristic of Aljawabra’s expressionist oeuvre the artworks are not only the stories of war but also of the painful new beginnings.

The exhibition uses a retrospective approach and features three groups of works. "The Story of Artist’s Studio" includes remains of early artworks reclaimed from the rubble of his studio in Daraa. "Witness to an Era – Narratives of Fear" includes expressionist paintings executed between 2012 and 2023 to bypass censorship, while presenting Syrian people’s suffering. "Manufacturing Hope" showcases artworks from 2023 and 2024, created while traveling between Damascus and Doha, a period culminating in overthrowing Syria’s brutal dictatorship.