The artist Johnny Semaan in front of one of his paintings. (Credit: Photo provided by Johnny Semaan)
After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Damascus’s cultural scene erupted with energy — a brief few weeks of euphoria. After decades of fear, writers, poets, filmmakers and visual artists filled public and private spaces, addressing what had long been unspeakable: dictatorship, war, the disappeared, prisons, exile. Art became a space for the catharsis of collective pain.But massacres of Alawites and Druze, the attack on Saint Elias Church in Damascus and the tightening grip of the new regime shattered that momentum. The political backdrop Massacres in Syria: The cynical gamble of foreign powers Massacres and broken dreams of artistsWhen internationally renowned soprano Aseel Massoud arrived in Sweida on July 12 to visit her parents, she found herself in the midst of killings. She would not return to her home in Barcelona, where...
After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Damascus’s cultural scene erupted with energy — a brief few weeks of euphoria. After decades of fear, writers, poets, filmmakers and visual artists filled public and private spaces, addressing what had long been unspeakable: dictatorship, war, the disappeared, prisons, exile. Art became a space for the catharsis of collective pain.But massacres of Alawites and Druze, the attack on Saint Elias Church in Damascus and the tightening grip of the new regime shattered that momentum. The political backdrop Massacres in Syria: The cynical gamble of foreign powers Massacres and broken dreams of artistsWhen internationally renowned soprano Aseel Massoud arrived in Sweida on July 12 to visit her parents, she found herself in the midst of killings. She would not return to her home in Barcelona,...