15 May Journeys from an Absent Present to a Lost Past
Imagine a streetscape the size of a doll’s house. In ‘Journeys from an Absent Present to a Lost Past’, an exhibition at Fabrica, in Brighton, Mohamed Hafez has crafted beautiful miniature installations, that transport the viewer to an urban Syrian landscape. Each tiny environment shows everyday traces of local life. Washing hangs in the street, a car is parked outside a front door, a satellite dish rusts on the roof.
Mohamed Hafez, Syrian born architect and artist living in the USA, began making model environments to soothe his homesickness. First because of a post 9/11 travel ban, and then as a result of the war in Syria, he is no longer able to go back to the home that he remembers. He recreates the Damascus of his memories. “There’s always that emotional longing to go home,” he says.
Understanding the power of art to both express and work with the grief of loss, Hafez makes meaning by communicating something of the migrant experience. Speaking in a short film that accompanies the exhibition, Hafez reminds us “that life is fragile”. Hafez wants to capture our attention with his exquisite model images, “I like to be sneaky, because you know, that’s how crises happen in our lives. They sneak up on us.”
I recall there have been three brief moments in my life so far, when I faced the possibility of losing my home, but I have never had to confront losing my homeland. For me, contemplating this surfaces empathy for those who are in more precarious situations.
In Syria, crisis is ongoing. These tiny fragments of old Damascus streets invite us to see a knotted global issue from ‘another’s shoes’. An interactive element of the exhibition invites visitors to consider ‘What is home to you?’ I am aware that it is often only away from home that we really come to know the answer. I think of the familiar smell of Hackney’s green and grime that greets me after time elsewhere.
See here for next Grief Tending events.
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