Dubai-based artist displays ‘bleeding Syria’ in exhibition

DUBAI - Agence France-Presse

Azzam stands in front of his work exhibited as part of an exhibition titled ‘The Syrian Museum.’ AFP photo

A popular map on social networks depicting a “bleeding” war-torn Syria has emerged as the centrepiece of an exhibition in Dubai by digital artist Tammam Azzam.

The artwork -- simply a 4.5 square metre ap of Syria painted in red to indicate blood -- is one of various pieces portraying the carnage of the conflict while mocking the international community’s inaction.

“I used the Syrian map as an icon,” Azzam told AFP. “This map had never meant anything to me during my whole life before. Suddenly, I had a new-discovered nation.” In many of his works, Azzam, who hails from Syria’s Druze minority heartland city of Sweida, extensively uses the map of his country -- where more than 41,000 people have been killed since protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime erupted in March 2011, according to a watchdog.

Another artwork shows pieces of the Syrian map burning and falling apart while yet another one portrays it in red, hit by a bullet in its centre, sitting over the United Nations logo -- also in red instead of its original blue colour. This work, as many of his pieces, strongly criticises the failure of the international community to end the bloodshed in Syria. A part of the exhibition titled “The Syrian Museum” shows works combining photographs of destruction in Syria.