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A Syrian artist’s ‘sweet revenge’: Painting Trump and other world leaders as starving refugees

Kristine Phillips, Washington Post, June 20, 2017

Syrian artist Abdalla Al Omari left his home country in 2012, the year that the battle between rebels and government forces reached the streets of Damascus and Aleppo.

 

Displaced and angry, Omari sought asylum in Brussels in 2014. That's when he started a series of paintings portraying the world's most powerful and influential figures as if they were in the same position he had found himself in.

 

Omari portrayed the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former president Barack Obama as dirty, disheveled and starving refugees lining up for food. His exhibit, “The Vulnerability Series,” which features at least a dozen paintings of world leaders, is on display until July 6 at the Ayyam Gallery in Dubai.