Faces laden with memory in Hamsah Shalhoub’s solo exhibition

Shalhoub highlights Syrian characters from both emotional and aesthetic perspectives, capturing the image of a Syrian in exile.

These characters are often portrayed with smiles, reflecting either their survival or their efforts to adapt to a new identity. Whether joyful or at peace despite loss, her characters convey hope or resilience.

The traveller's bag

The paintings explore aspects of travel and depict characters with diverse expressions and forms, with the memories they carry, or the places they inhabit, sometimes symbolised by a bag.

Her depiction of bags is a prominent symbol of the traveller or the refugee, who both ask: What do we pack? What will we need?

It reflects the journey from Syria to refuge, but of course a bag cannot hold all memories and relationships. It symbolises the narrow confines of what can be taken, and what must be left behind.

Shalhoub captures scenes from the lives of young people and their families, focusing on what remains in their memories versus what they forget or remember.

The bag becomes a symbolic 'cemetery' for the homeland, responding to the Syrian tragedy with an art form that expresses the experience of escape and the impact of Syrian pain. It signifies an unknown journey ahead.

In her paintings, Shalhoub uses the bag in various ways—centrally, peripherally—to complement colour and composition.

The scar of alienation

She also depicts paper boats, symbolising the fragility of the small overloaded boats carrying Syrians to Europe.

The paper boat embodies the delicate nature of fate and its varying positions within the paintings highlight the fragility of the journey and of destiny.

Likewise, her depiction of sinking bags reflects the fate of those who do not make it. In some works, bags are shown carrying trainers, alluding to young people's search for safety and security elsewhere.

At times, Hamsah Shalhoub crafts the structure of the face in a neutral expressive style, while at other times, she adds distinctive features to evoke specific impressions.

The face is symbolically divided between dark and light, highlighting the tension between hope and despair within the Syrian identity.

Despite efforts to form a new identity through clothing and decoration, a trace of darkness often remains on the Syrian face, symbolising an indelible scar of alienation.

A focus on faces

This repetition manifests as a rhythmic pattern in the faces, accompanied by simple visual symbols that allude to specific realities or Syrian narratives related to migration and exile.

The use of framing and surrounding elements creates colour symbolism. For instance, blue represents drowning or signifies characters whose experiences with the sea and water are integral to their existence.

In one painting, Shalhoub depicts a captain or smuggler manoeuvring ships in various directions. They embody the Syrian fate: being at the mercy of an adventurous captain, a smuggler who experiments with people's lives on what amounts to paper boats.

Trying to reach foreign shores, the painting conveys the fragility of the Syrian condition, the precarious nature of the journey, and the tragic cycle of Mediterranean crossings.

In another painting, a fragile paper ship is worn as a crown by the smuggler, whose gilded wire chair reflects a stark contrast between luxury and deformity.

The smuggler's face—now a symbol of lasting trauma—becomes a part of the collective memory and a marker of tragedy.

Some faces in Shalhoub's work show bruises, scratches, or scattered colour formations. This reflects the psychological vulnerability of the migrant, perhaps feeling broken, shameful, and fearful.

The erasure or distortion of the face represents a violation of the self, highlighting the loss of beauty, identity, or memory. In certain paintings, the face is central to the composition, occupying a significant portion of the artwork.

Bright colour spots are used to disrupt the face's unity, creating a visual imbalance and emphasising the emotional rupture it conveys.

This technique underscores the contrast between the face's visual presence and the emotional dissonance it represents, enhancing the impact of the artwork and reflecting the complex reality of alienation and displacement.

Collective profile 

In some of her paintings, Shalhoub presents a collective composition that emphasises the diversity of characters and the intensity of Syrian society.

These works capture the spirit of communal gatherings common to Syrian oral narratives, evoking collective memories of time spent with family and friends.

Through these paintings, she recreates the classic essence of Syrian social sessions, expressing an imagined and remembered reality through visual and symbolic details.

The paintings depicting traditional Syrian gatherings illustrate the poignant gap between expatriates and their families or friends.

This artistic composition embodies the deep psychological impact of these sessions, where family or social meetings become symbols of lost connections and emotional voids caused by alienation.

The repetition in these artworks reflects emotional attachment and nostalgia, giving them a psychological and artistic depth that contrasts one's beautiful memories with one's painful present.

Shalhoub enhances the imaginative quality of memory by embedding images that capture the emotional void left by the absence of close relationships.

Her approach highlights the gap between genuine human relationships (characterised by honesty and deep communication) and the often-superficial connections experienced during alienation.

This invites reflection on past relationships marked by depth and sincerity with current experiences which may lack the same intimacy. In this way, her paintings explore the ongoing quest for authentic friendships and relationships.

Moments of realisation 

Shalhoub has imbued her art with a profound conceptual dimension, blending visual and chromatic elements to create a unique artistic experience.

Dense and immersive, her work offers an encounter that transcends traditional painting. Each composition strives for a distinctive balance, setting it apart from others while maintaining aesthetic harmony among the various elements.

The paintings incorporate symbols and evocative meanings, which reflects both the technical and artisanal beauty of Syrian talent.

Shalhoub enhances the artistic image with carefully measured abstract structures, which deepen the composition and enrich the visual experience.

Sometimes, she employs exaggerated abstract forms and vibrant colours, creating a powerful impact on the viewer and expanding their perceptual framework.

This approach challenges the eye and broadens the boundaries of artistic interpretation, adding a new dimension to the aesthetic experience and prompting fresh reflections on the work's composition and its interaction with the viewer.