“The Syrian revolution has had a profound impact on me personally. It gave me a different perspective on things, and made me a more mature person. As for painting, it gave me new ideas and new perceptions.”
With these words, Syrian artist Mouhammed Tamimi describes the immense effect that the uprising has had on him and his art.
Born in Aleppo 1983, Tamimi has a degree in information technology from the university of Aleppo. Fusing technology with his passion for art, Tamimi usually creates his paintings using computer graphics.
Tamimi's art evolved from focusing on social issues, to include more political themes. This transformation, says the artist, was driven by the revolution, which helped him refine his style of painting.
As the uprising progressed, the habitual topics that the artist addressed in his paintings were soon overshadowed by the situation in Syria. The humor in the artworks of Tamimi, who used to draw caricatures and comics, became less frequent, in favor of the cruelty that he had witnessed in his country.
To portray the ever-growing violence, the artists paints a peace dove holding barrel bombs instead of an olive branch. While another painting of a bullet and a barrel bomb shaking hands before reaching their destination, emphasizes that the terror of Assad and armed opposition are the same.
The art of Mouhammed Tamimi exposes dictatorship and tyrants, it depicts the tragedy in Syria, but it also creates a much needed means for people to carry on their struggle against oppression; hope. Hope can be found in a painting of a child swinging on a tank gun, or a painting of a fetus, screaming in his mother's womb: freedom.
Like most young Syrian artists, Tamimi started his career using a fake name, to avoid prosecution. He has also participated in several exhibitions in Ramallah, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and Germany.
The artist asserts that the uprising has given him and many others non-materialistic things that they could not have obtained without it, experiences that helped shape and develop them as human beings.
