A Visual Document Exploring the Crowd Scenes in Contemporary Syria... A Work by Mohamad Omran

The artist Mohamad Omran, a beneficiary of the third edition of the Laboratory of Arts programme, is currently working on a project entitled Crowd. The work takes the form of an art booklet that reproduces images of mass crowds in Syria from the 1980’s to the present day. The booklet relies on painting as an artistic technique, with written texts (captions) that introduce the paintings and the events they depict.

Omran shares with us the following lines about the project's idea, its artistic technique, the selected crowd scenes, and its current stage of development.

For me, the concept of the crowd has always been a tempting and inspiring subject at the level of composition. From the very beginning, I have been preoccupied with representing the human element in both sculpture and drawing. The concept of the crowd has always been present in my artwork, for example the Crowd collection 2005/2006 and later the Waiting collection 2015/2016. Hence comes my desire to produce the Crowd art booklet which is in one form or another, a continuation of my personal artistic project.

For this booklet, I have chosen a collection of scenes depicting crowds so as to allow the viewer an opportunity to explore the history of contemporary Syria through the element of the crowd. I believe this to be the closest expression of the concept of the group.

Recently, the image of the crowd has been linked to the idea of ​​protesting, especially after the Arab uprisings. I believe that there is an extraordinary magic in demonstrations, where they bestow on the individual a sense of strength and solid belonging to the group and the place. Therefore, cases such as demonstrations and martyrs funerals that occurred during the peaceful period at the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011 are part of the scenes present in my project.

In pre-revolution Syria, for example, the masses were often obliged to gather and form crowds, as is the case in the scenes of renewal of allegiance, celebration of national holidays or the reception of foreign presidents, such as the visit of former French President Jacques Chirac to Syria in the 1990s. Therefore, I have included some of these scenes in the booklet, along with crowd scenes from the funeral of the former president.

From the 1980s, I have chosen scenes related to Al Ba'ath Party and student conferences, crowds waiting at the doors of consumer cooperatives, and raw materials and gas distribution centers during the siege period, which is a scene currently repeated during the ongoing war. The booklet also includes more violent and tragic scenes such as depictions of displacement, or executions carried out in public squares in the cities occupied by radical religious groups, such as Al Nosra Front and ISIL. On the other hand, I have chosen funny scenes related, in one way or another, to the concept of the crowd in contemporary Syrian society, such as summer gatherings in the area of ​​the Unknown Soldier i.e. what is locally known as the Siran (picnic) area, in addition to holiday gatherings.

I relied on expressive exaggeration as an artistic technique without being too radical in using caricatures or illustrations. The primary purpose of the project is to produce artworks of value. The drawings included express an imaginary vision that is parallel to reality and is simultaneously based on visual references (images / videos), instead of being a direct commentary on the events.

In addition to the drawings, the Crowd project will include short texts (captions) that will introduce the depicted event. The texts are special testimonies that I have collected while preparing and working on the scenes. Now I am in the process of drafting texts that go in line with the spirit of the drawings; I am also intending to translate them into French and English for non-Arabic speakers.

Through the Crowd project, I am seeking to produce a different visual document that depicts crowd scenes in contemporary Syria. This artistic document will present contemporary Syrian society through Syrian crowds and will shed light on the concept of the group, its significance, and its changes since the 1980s until the present day. The project is an attempt to search for the space existing between the real and the imaginary; it is a way to recount the historical events and explore the local social situation.

I have completed five works (half the collection) measuring 65x50 cm, where I relied on drawing on paper using ink pens, Chinese inks, and aquarelle for drawing forms, as well as acrylic dyes for coloring.

At this point, I am preparing to complete the first part of the project i.e. completing the remaining five drawings, in addition to preparing the captions, so that I can start the second phase of the Crowd project, which is to develop the visual identity of the booklet and to initiate the printing process (I will seek the services of a graphic designer at that point).

Mohammad Omran

Born in Damascus in 1979, he is a graduate of the Sculpture Department in the Faculty of Fine Arts - Damascus University, 2000 and a graduate of postgraduate studies from the same department in 2002. He holds a Master's degree in History of Contemporary Art from Lyon College II, France, 2009. Omran participated in many solo and group exhibitions in the Arab world and Europe. His works have been acquired by several private and public bodies including the Ministry of Culture in Syria, the Royal Museum in Jordan, the Atassi Foundation in Dubai and the British Museum in London. He published two studies in the field of plastic arts; the first is entitled Maher al-Baroudi, an Artist between Two Cultures, and the second is The Image of the Tortured Body in Contemporary Syrian Art, which was produced with the support of Ettijahat-Independent Culture.