Artist Tammam Azzam is through with looking at destruction.
After completing “Storeys,” a large-scale abstract painting project based on photographs from Syrian cities, he has seen enough: buildings gutted by bombs, empty streets, a sense of stillness. “The emptiness made me feel so much fear,” he said. “I want to talk about that.”
Azzam left Damascus for Dubai in 2011, just after the beginning of a revolution that would grow into the massive, multi-sided armed conflict it is today, driving millions of people from the country. Already a prolific artist — his work has appeared at exhibitions in Budapest, New York and Houston, as well as Banky’s Dismaland exhibition in the UK — but suddenly lacking studio space and materials, Azzam began to create digital art. In 2013, his digitally-constructed image of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” on a bombed-out building caught the world’s attention.
