Arab Spring 1

The works in Hani Alqam’s Arab Spring series were created in response to poetic texts written by Habibah Sheikh, a nomadic performance artist originally from Lebanon, and the curator of the exhibition, Mitli Mitlak. In the text, a character named Ruba experiences the destruction of war firsthand and becomes a refugee in the process.

Alqam’s Arab Spring series uses Arabic alphabet characters layered discordantly, to portray feelings of pandemonium. This painting is a landscape of war, in which the character, Ruba, in Act 1, Scene 1 of Mitli Mitlak, sees outside her window.

“Come to the window...
Look outside,
Hot tanks on the street,
Mounds of rubble,
The building collapsed from top to bottom,
Over flooded narrow streets.
Oh Father, my burned city, the bloodshed of when our homeland was seized.”

(Above text taken from the Miller Art Museum Exhibition Description, 2019)