The American embassy in London is hosting a display of paintings by Syrian exiles, a week before the US Ambassador to the UK leaves his post, ahead of President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. In one of his final speeches as ambassador at the exhibition opening on 13 January, Matthew Barzun stressed the importance of showing the art in this period of “destruction” in Syria.
Entitled The Art of Resilience, the show is displayed in the entrance foyer of the embassy in Grosvenor Square, which normally has a row of painted portraits of former US ambassadors in London.
Among the five Syrian artists featured is Tarek Tuma, who came to Britain ten years ago to study medicine and later turned to art. His large painting, Duma/Rebirth (2012), crudely nailed to a wooden panel, as per the artist’s directions, is a homage to his hometown of Duma, just outside Damascus, where a major battle took place five years ago between government forces and rebels. The other artists in the show are Ammar Azzouz, Hazar Bakbachi-Henriot, Amjad Wardeh and Zaria Zardasht. The works are lent by the Mosaic Initiative, a London-based charity that assists those caught up in the Syrian conflict.
The exhibition runs until 29 January, but for security reasons it is only open to US embassy officials and invited guests.