Title of the project: Continuity

 Intro for Syrian City Paintings



We asked summer 2013 Syrian painters, most of them living in Egypt and Syria, - in regions with heavy crisis  - to paint Syrian historical heritage, cities and monuments.
Most of these sites are damaged or even destroyed and artists paint them from postcards and photos.
Why did Shadi Alshhadeh, why did we initiate this project?
 On the first glance these pictures look like  traditional landscape painting, but they are not at all. We look at these paintings,  they do not look like modern art, but they are modern art, they need a special treatment, strategy and explanation.

An elder art-dealer couple, whome I asked for advise said: The additional value of the paintings is, that you are serving your community and the healing process of the souls in your community by asking women who sit at home in desperation to paint. It is psychotherapeutic work. 
I think it is more. We restore cultural memory and  keep up memory, our history, our  values and by that our dignity.
 A third aspect is like a secret beyond what I can express with words:   civilisation and martyrs for freedom.   It is a collaborative project, since  more then one painter paints and many people have access to this psychoterapic painting,  to the healing process.  The paintings will be  placed in  quite dense order in many lines, in the same way as an iconostasis in  orthodox churches.  
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Still, it might easily/well happen, that people, who are used to formal aspects of modern art will not like them, because they percieve rather the formal modernity. Those people  like Stretched Objects and computer sculptures, abstraction.
Still we can consider, that very few people like to decorate their homes with Stretched Objects , abstraction and Malevich prints. The majority would hang Omari mosque painting or Greek ruins  in the dining room, that means there's still a worldwide gap between modernity and tradition, or we can call it more critical also popular taste, or populist taste? (( (Betrayal of modernity? how far shall I go?). 

Also important:  many Syrian women painter, who sit at home or even in tents in desperation should have the possibility to paint and participate actively in the healing process. 
It is not about the ability to paint good or bad, but about building a common monument, where educated syrian upper class people like Heba and other less  educated  or poorer one can also participate. What do you think?  Myrian's paintings show so much emotion and love of the places.
 Text to be continued. 
Rebuild to be continued.  - No : Rebuild of Syria to be started.  -- -no, the fact is, that destrution has to be stopped first. The fact is, that monuments were destroyed,  those minarets and churches does not exist anymore. They exist only  as memory on the paintings.
A whole country was shelled and destroyed. And now you tell the painters to paint locations for a sightseeing tour , and these locations does not exist anymore.
 Will they stand infront of Omari Mosque and sell the paintings to tourists after the war? Like french painters on Montmartre sell aquarelles on Basilica Sacre Coeur , but in this case Basilica  Sacre Coer would be missing from Montmartre and the painter with his souvenir left alone.
 Is there a difference between the popular ( traditional)   painting  of  the monument, made by the aquarelist before  its destruction- and after its distruction?

And by the way, who is still teaching landscape painting in Syrian style in art-academie in times of  reproductions? What will all the painters do after the liberation of the country?
Will there be a place for them and the continuity of culture? Or will the all fall into a dark gap? 

We are in a transitional state.  All what we know is, that all Syrians can participate in this project - there's no ethinc - religious difference.  The bridge in Deir El Zor belonged to all of us, while it was there, so the churches and mosques, castles and ancient ruins.

It was very often said, that it is difficult to make contemporary art, since the reality exceeds all imaginations and it is depicted in media images.   In this case we can say that the work is  painting in academic style defined by the reality of what is depicted, which does not exist at this moment, neither the monuments, nor the school, where generations of Syrian painters belonged to.  Still,  there is and there will be continuity.

Róza El-Hassan  and Shadi Alshhdeh ,  Syrian Voices 2013 

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