Tammam Azzam (Syrian, b. 1980)

Tammam Azzam's present series communicates the magnitude of devastation experienced across his native Syria through expressionist compositions of destroyed cityscapes. The banality of everyday life is entirely absent from the deserted setting of this canvas contributing to a heavy atmosphere of loneliness and retreat. Navigating his way through the labyrinth of physical and emotional consequences for those who have stayed and those who have escaped their war-torn homeland, Azzam rejects any attempt to over-sentimentalise what has been left behind or what lies ahead, instead he leaves us with the difficult and confronting reality of a country ruins.