((PKG)) SYRIAN ARTIST
((Banner: From War))
((Reporter/Camera: June Byung Hwa Soh))
((Map: New Haven, Connecticut))
((NATS))
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
I think the human eye is fascinated by the detail of destruction. There is something that lures us into that complexity of something falling apart. We are always curious to find out what happened.
((NATS))
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
I am Mohamad Hafez. I am a Syrian, born in Damascus. I was raised in Saudi Arabia and I came to the United States when I was 17 years old. Today, I am an architect and an artist based in New Haven, Connecticut.
((NATS))
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
My exhibit is at Fairfield University and several other locations. The work usually will give a holistic idea of what a Syrian citizen might have experienced in the last six years. You see my work from earlier stages that show the country before the war, and as you walk your way through the exhibit, you see the work that depict a little bit more of the destruction now. You see work depicted inside suitcases that tell the later story of the refugee crisis.
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
There's nothing glamorous about destruction but I use it as one, a therapeutic way for me to heal and creatively weep over the destruction.
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
15 years ago when I arrived here, I was an architecture student and my visa was stamped a single-entry only. That caused me to get stuck here eight years. This had caused a lot of homesickness and longing to the beautiful country that I have left. And, of course, in 2003 back then, there was no war in Syria. I started using scrap materials and leftover materials from architectural model making, and I started remodeling old Damascus and old Aleppo in miniature form.
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
And most recently, I started a series called Unpacked Refugee Baggage. We had refugee families from many, many countries, many different backgrounds.
((Courtesy for three baggage photos: Unpacked Refugee baggage))
When I started remodeling their stories, their houses, the places they left behind, inside suitcases. When the word got out that I was doing this project, a lot of people came to me with their parents’ and grandparents’ suitcases. Some of them aged to the 1800s. I'm talking about Jewish communities, Irish communities, German communities, Indian communities that really felt and resonated with a push back against today's immigrants and reminded them of what their ancestors and their grandparents have been through in this country.
((NATS))
((Krissy Ponden, Exhibit Visitor))
I was really impressed listening to him talk about how art can be used to help humanize something that the media just paints everybody with one brush. He has taken all of these different little snippets of people's lives and he is showcasing them in a way that gives them their humanity back.
((NATS))
((Melissa Demartin, Exhibit Visitor))
The artist really captures that even in chaos and as bad as things can be, you can find some beauty. And he captures that in the vases, in the little flower pots, and the hanging laundry, and the lights, and all the little chairs and stuff.
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
I am not building art to cater to my echo chambers but I'd like to cater to somebody that might have, what I call, spicy opinions against refugees, Muslim Americans, immigrants.
((NATS))
((Mohamad Hafez, Artist))
I feel a big responsibility using my art, as a way, as a vessel, to communicate between cultures and people and groups of people, in a very divided society.
((NATS))
