War and Survival

When the war began, I never expected that I would experience the emotions of being caught between the choice of life or death. To live with the mentality of a survivor is not a natural state; choices become few, and in those moments, freedom vanishes, and constraints increase. The war forced me to change my tools for painting. I used to create all my artworks with soft, colorful materials, such as Damascene fabric, filled with decorations and vibrant colors. I loved embroidery and incorporated it into my work, creating paintings with passion and joy.

But everything changed after the war. I began to sketch people on paper, depicting panic, terror, fear, sorrow, and broken, bent, pale bodies with no features. I replaced my childish drawings and started cutting out images of people around me from newspapers. I used the letters I had written, and my titles shifted from love, pain, and dance to massacres, and from “we are numbers” to “waiting.” The colors faded, and my drawings were dominated by black and gray. Everything I painted was a direct reflection of the horrors I lived through in the protests, the gunfire aimed at people demanding freedom, the fear of political prison cells, the feeling of separation, and the constant struggle to survive.