The Arabic word at once expresses alienation, cultural isolation, feelings of homesickness as well as yearning, anxiety and loneliness. Throughout his six-decade career, Marwan Kassab-Bachi – the late Syrian artist known as Marwan – sought to capture this multidimensional state in his paintings.
A new exhibition in Berlin brings Marwan’s work back to the city that was at once his home and the crucible of his ghurba. The exhibition is titled The Jewels of My Career. It is organised by the Barjeel Art Foundation and is running at art auction house Lempertz until June 30.
While Marwan left his native Syria in 1957, travelling to Germany where he would live most of his life, he was inextricable from the Arab world. His works have become portraits of the disquiet of living abroad, a yearning for completeness as well as an attachment to a homeland rife with struggle.
