Today I want to showcase a project from last year’s archive, namely, two illustrations that I made after watching a documentary film, “Little Syria”, in which I was able to experiment with several techniques and from which I had so much to learn as an artist. Having the great honour to call the creators of the documentary (Mădălina Roșca, Reem Karssli and Paul Arne Wagner) my friends, they sent me a preview in order to ask for suggestions or comments during the editing phase. After watching their work, I came up with a series of illustration ideas on the subject. Meanwhile, “Little Syria” has been selected to be screened at CPH:DOX 2025 festival and it was nominated for an award in the Human Rights section of the festival.
About the documentary:
“Filmed for over 20 years in Syria and Germany, as well as in Turkey, Greece, Poland, Hungary, France, Spain and Iran, Little Syria follows the quest of a brother, his sister and her boyfriend, trapped between a Syria from which they ran for their lives, and a Europe which seems at times to embrace them and at others to push them back. Reem, Mohammed and Yasser try to make sense of what is left of the Syrian Revolution. “Little Syria” is a confidential insight into the invisible lives of Syrian refugees.
In the time of making of this film, more than 14 million Syrians have been forced to leave their homes. Syrians asked for asylum in more than 130 countries.
The people living in the Little Syria of Europe are trying to find the missing and the disappeared, while also trying to bring to justice the ones responsible for torture and crimes. This happens in the hostile climate of a constant ascent of the extreme right.”
For the first illustration, I have attempted to superimpose two planes of reality based on drawing, decoupage, painting and photography. The characters of the documentary have taken refuge in Berlin. That is why I included the Brandenburg gate as the location of the present from which they are looking towards the past, a present that offers them the safety of carrying out the search for their missing relatives, lost in a Syria under the bloody regime established by dictator Bashar al-Assad. I printed the characters from a still frame, cut them out and placed them in front of the gate. The destroyed market onto which the characters are looking is the main square of Arbin (near Damascus) that was bombarded by Russian military planes on January 4th, 2018.
Meanwhile, I played around with light sources observing the dynamic effect that the shadow has within the composition and how much it contributes to the 3D aspect of the artwork. I have used several tools: lamps, lenses, helping hands used in electronics.
For the second illustration, I’ve made a graphic work depicting a street in Yarmouk, a UNRWA refugee camp in Damascus. Yarmouk has hosted the largest community of Palestinian refugees in Syria. 160.000 people were forcefully displaced from this camp during the civil war in Syria. This is the artwork that I have created.
When I was visiting Berlin in February 2020, there was this protest of Syrians that had taken refuge in Germany taking place in front of the Russian embassy, protest that was held every weekend. The people were chanting ”Stop killing the Syrian people!”, ”Putin, terrorist! Assad, terrorist!”, ”One, two, three, Syria will be free!” I don't know how many of them are still in Berlin at the moment or if the protests are still being organized, but for me this remains a memorable event from that trip.
I have previously worked with Mădălina and Paul in 2019 when they asked me to create illustrations for their documentary “Belina” about the high-level corruption in Romania. You can read more about this project in this article. Due to the fact that Reem Karssli’s story as a war refugee resonated with me and my research, I have worked intensely and with concentration on this project, thus realizing that a captivating and dramatic story can generate a lot of inspiration and motivation in my illustration work. While I was simultaneously working on my project on the war in Ukraine and on the one regarding to the refuge of my grandmother from Bessarabia, these illustrations came as an extension of the artistic research I have been conducting on the theme of forced displacement.
Good luck to the team at Make a Point and I hope this documentary will also be screened in Romania or at least be picked up by a streaming platform. Watch out for it!