Ahmad: “I love painting and its magic more than anything else I do”
When he draws, he wants to listen to music.
The extraordinary thing is that he listens to ‘Odes’, the album of Greek folk songs by Vangelis Papathanasiou sung by Irene Papas!
“I know a lot about Greece. One of my favorite painters is Panayiotis Tetsis“.
Ahmad. The 50-year-old lawyer, writer and poet from Raqqa in Syria, is among the well-known contemporary authors of the Arab world who now lives in Athens along with his eldest son, Yozan.
He paints, and he feels alive.
Painting is what he loves. Art enables him to express himself – to express what he has lived, to describe his current life, to capture on the canvas the hope for the future, to give color to his dreams. He is dreaming of becoming a professional painter and to be reunited with his wife Nadjah, and his two younger children, Haya and Abdalah.
Thus, today there is an apartment in Athens city center full of colors and brushes, having in its center the painter’s easel. Most of Ahmad’s works depict moments from the war in his homeland, moments as “indelible memories” as he characterizes them, while in other drawings there are moments of things he loves; such as the painting depicting the grace of movement of a ballet dancer.
*Ahmad’s Alzaher paintings are exhibited at Technopolis in Gazi, in the context of the World Refugee Day celebration, on June 20th, 19.30 to 22.30.
*Ahmad and his son live in a SolidarityNow accommodation structure in the framework of ESTIA-the Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation program, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and funded by European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO).
Nakam loves the blue color, but he is drawing in black and white.
Nakam is a Kurdish painter and writer.
Born in 1985, he studied arts in Iraq, and today, in Athens, he attends the Athens School of Fine Arts – “I like it here because I can paint and create what I want. I am very happy that I’m able to go to the University and visit all those art places, such as museums and galleries.”
Nakam’s drawings, with pencil and charcoal, depict the refugees’ passage in Europe by the sea and are exhibited at Technopolis for the celebration of the World Refugee Day*. “These drawings focus on people; how they came here and the problems they faced at sea.” One of his paintings shows a boat full of abstract figures crossing the sea while the land embraces them.
Nakam uses symbols to express the intense emotions and forces of fate: a tree, a dice, a pigeon. “There are symbols in all of my works. There are symbols for love, for the dreamers, and other for the difficulties, people and luck. Some are lucky, some are not. I know a lot of people who keep all to themselves, still traumatized by the journey, they cannot tell their story. That’s why I make these drawings and show what exists in their hearts, in the hearts of these people.”
Excerpts from his interview of Julia Turner
*Nakam’s paintings are exhibited at Technopolis in Gazi, in the context of the World Refugee Day celebration, on June 20th, 19.30 to 22.30.
**Nakam was one of the SolidarityNow beneficiaries in the Blue Dot Unit at Elefsina accommodation structure operated in the framework of the Blue Dots program that the organization implemented, with the support of UNICEF and funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operation (ECHO).
Ebraheem: “My dream is to create an Art Center”
In his 40ies, Ebraheem Majed came to Greece from Aleppo of Syria.
He has been in Greece since October 2017, and for the last two months he lives with his family in Ioannina. He is married and has three children. In his homeland, Ibrahim studied Literature and he worked as a professor for Arab-speaking and non-Arab-speaking students.
He loved arts since he was a child; he started painting at the age of 7! His love for painting was cultivated by his parents since both were painters. He has attended many calligraphy and painting seminars. For his studies in calligraphy, he was trained on the side of a famous calligrapher of the Arab world, Juma Ebrahim.
“My dream is to create an Arts Center that will embrace different kinds of Art, such as painting, music and theater“, says Ebraheem.
*Ebraheem’s Majed paintings are exhibited at Technopolis in Gazi, in the context of the World Refugee Day celebration, on June 20th, 19.30 to 22.30.
* Ebraheem Majed lives with his family in a SolidarityNow accommodation structure in Ioannina, in the framework of ESTIA-the Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation program, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and funded by European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO).