066 BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Creating miniature renditions of interiors and streets from his Syrian homeland started out as therapy, then turned into a compelling sculptural practice for architect Mohamad Hafez. Most recently it has resulted in a life- sized space for shared community. Veronica Simpson reports
HOW DO WE value the things we love? How do we show the ways in which they are precious to us? For Syrian-born architect Mohamad Hafez, there was a particular combination of powerful factors inspiring a body of work that has evolved over almost 20 years, but gained special resonance in the last few. He had gone to study architecture in the US – on a ‘one way’ visa – in 2003, and was suffering intense homesickness. Almost as a form of art therapy, he started using his modelling skills to fabricate miniature sculptural scenarios that reminded him of home, initially in plaster. Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2013, his motivation took a different twist, sparked by anxiety over what might be left of his former home city Damascus. His sculptures transformed into delicately worked, elaborate assemblages mostly comprising of found or salvaged elements, paint and scrap metal, which are at once both utterly exotic and familiar, full of the inventive repurposing of things, such as ornamental earrings used as
chandeliers, or elements incorporated from old transistor radios.
After years of making these small, scenic mementos in secret, he decided to exhibit them in public and to serve a desire to reclaim the word refugee and humanise it by touring these works around the globe and talking about the vanishing world they represent. Now living a relatively affluent Western life as a practicing architect and teacher, based in Newhaven, Connecticut, he says: ‘I thought the bare minimum responsibility I’d have is to raise awareness…to share the stories, to show what is so rich about the region and what is so devastating that somebody could risk all their family in a little boat over the Mediterranean.’ Hafez and his works were a star turn at the Brighton Festival this year (which ran mid-April to late May), having been invited by one of the festival’s guest directors, Marwa al-Sabouni, herself a Syrian born architect. Hafez’s show, called ‘Journeys From An Absent Present to a Lost Past’, was exhibited in a former church now repurposed as Fabrica art gallery, its high ceilings and gothic windows giving shelter to work that pulsates with displacement and yearning for home. He tells me: ‘As an artist and an architect I’m very intrigued by the shared humanity and the shared human conceptions around ideas of home. I am always caught by surprise, that these exhibits reveal a huge common denominator between humans. But we are living in a very divided time and othering of people, and saying: “oh, that’s a worthy refugee, and this one’s less worthy”. I think that’s where art comes into play really. I’m just highlighting that commonality between humans. At the very least holding a mirror up to society.’ However, he finds that there is usually a strongly positive reaction to his works. ‘It’s amazing. People from all walks of life find a relationship with this work. I’ve yet to figure out what it is with miniatures that intrigues humans, of so many different backgrounds,
so many different ages. I know that I use beauty as the lure. We long for beauty. And people have a hard time with my work because they want to say: “it’s beautiful but it’s also kind of ugly and sad at the same time”. It’s those mixed emotions I turn back to them [and say] “welcome to the last 20 years of my life”.’ I mention a saying I recently heard, from French philosopher Blaise Pascale: ‘In difficult times keep something beautiful in your heart.’ He agrees: ‘In a way I lucked out with channeling my homesickness into this beautiful, highly detailed work. I’m a big sucker for beauty, a big sucker for design and I think had I not had this embedded in my mind I could have got stuck in a heavy depression. But
ALL IMAGES: VERONICA SIMPSON
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