(re)constructing the city of jasmine
May 9, 2025Reconstructing a city that has been destroyed and rebuilt over ten times is a pointless task. Her people will clean the streets, repair the holes, and rebuild homes from the rubble. But rather than reconstruct Damascus with my panels and brush, I am (re)constructing a fragmented memory of a ground my toes have never touched. A ground that thousands of Damascene people have never seen or have not seen in ten years. A collective nostalgia, or lack thereof.
While interrogating nostalgia, stark nationalistic projection becomes clear in what images depict a “secular, apolitical” Syria. Instagram pages, Facebook accounts, and the Assad Regime’s propaganda cast one neighborhood as the soul of the city, the Old City of Damascus. Filled with buildings thousands of years old, families older than the buildings, and a spirit encompassing the Syrian people, this neighborhood presents itself beyond its aesthetic magnitude- but serves simultaneously as a political tool. Loved by the resistance, the rebels, the regime, and the apolitical, the Old City must hold the memory I am attempting to (re)construct.
For all, but Shamis especially, nostalgia is a dangerous mindset. Stuck in the intoxication of displaced memory, nostalgia causes us to yearn for a home that was typically far from ideal, depicting a paradoxical stagnant, yet forever evolving culture. Diasporas yearn for a time when media censorship, massacres, and poverty were an unavoidable reality. Nostalgia tricks us into yearning for the time of tyranny that forced us into displacement, and to avoid the unavoidable. This understanding of nostalgia’s trick and manipulation resulted in a lack of decisiveness on my subject matter and reference. Which images are propaganda, and which neighborhoods are filled with the cronies of the regime? Am I addicted to the propaganda that the regime feeds the diaspora? I do not believe that I am - but is anyone immune to image?
Google Earth imaging stands as the double-edged sword of image reference, taking in moments of real time - no edits, no plans, and daily life. It captured the moments of pre-war suppression and continues to document current realities. But these realities are biased. Google’s Nimbus endeavors to create surveillance technology for the israelis and Big Tech’s ongoing relationships with war profiteers reinforce the almost imperial relationship of the diaspora. Google Earth imaging is rumored to be used for AI development in Project Nimbus, reinforcing surveillance, occupation, tyranny, and repressing the ongoing fight for freedom for Syrians. Rather than reducing this use of image to a simple aesthetic choice, understanding the nuance of sourcing is necessary. Google is complicated and actively participating in the oppression of Arab people, but continues to serve as a means of observation and connection. Acting as the imperialist, the interventionist, and the diasporic, the Arab residency in the West has become an inherited hypocrisy as the perpetrator and the victim of Western (American) interventionism. Beyond the hypocrisy and nuance in the inhumane political ventures of image sourcing, these images themselves are biased. Only wealthy, Sunni, and ancient neighborhoods find themselves the subject of Google Imaging. Therefore diasporic nostalgia will forever remain an imperialist indulgence.
The Umayyad Mosque quickly became the subject of my body of work as it is a signifier of a disjointed, ancient, and forever-shifting national identity that is not immune to being the subject of propaganda. The architecture and scenes of life with clear photographic fragmentation facilitate a sense of longing and a fear to establish itself at the forefront of the work. This fear lies in the reality of a country that has seen nothing but intervention, tyranny, and exploitation from its leaders, evolving into a lost identity. However, the work itself is subtle, with only a single image transfer present in a single painting to establish direct political reference; the work instead relies on an abstraction of space, architecture, and daily life.
Conflicts of public versus private, of interior versus exterior, and a lack of definition of space continuously unfold. In the courtyard of“umayyad mosque, google-earth”, the viewer is enticed by grand architecture obstructed by the stripped archways, hinting towards destruction, reconstruction, and a loss of space. Invited into a space without clear definition, the viewer finds themselves wandering the courtyard alongside the small figures within the painting. The courtyard is a space of community, family, and conversation, but sectarianism remains the regime’s strongest weapon against its people. The Umayyad Mosque stands as a grand display of the country’s vast and ancient history, but remains a declaration of the majority Sunni Muslim population. The mosque courtyard becomes a public and private space, as it is interior and exterior, religious and nationalistic, gendered and genderless.
The depiction of women within the “women’s section of the mosque, google earth” and “ahmad al shara’a, listening to the news,” places women almost exclusively into the interior or domestic world, pointing to the politicization of gender within post-war Damascus. Although the work does not declare public space unsafe for women, the work hints at the reality of cultural regression and possible bias in Google Earth imaging. Women occupy private and personal cultural sectors, while men occupy all institutions, even the women’s section of the mosque. The sitting woman in “ahmad al shara’a, listening to the news,” is in a state of consideration and thought. The image transfers depict the Al Jazeera news-casting of Ahmad Al Shara’a’s speech to Arab world leaders on their obligation to maintain the freedom of the Syrian people, and with this depiction comes the doubts held by women. Should a fundamentalist be trusted with establishing gender equity? Probably not.
Although the aforementioned paintings focus on gendered space itself, in “side-street of umayyad mosque, google-earth,” a non-gendered public space, we see all male figures except for one unsuspected girl with her back to the viewer. Women seem not to occupy the open, public sector. I am offering no larger criticism of Syrian culture on the basis of Google-Imaging captures of one moment on one afternoon, but instead observation. An observation of where and when women exist. Ahmad al Shara’a promised an equal society to the women and men of Syria, and the work hints towards caution on these declarations.
There is no profound gesture in saying war is destructive and deadly. War is destructive and deadly - yet revolt continues, tyranny suppresses revolution, and the international community permits the death of millions for the sake of economic interest. The Western mind is fascinated with visualizing the death of the Arab. Regardless of how intoxicating a confrontation of a decaying Western culture may be, an indulgence in sadism will not aid in understanding how nationalism and nostalgia feed propaganda. I have no business fulfilling the perversion of the Western imagination.
However, I find myself arguing with Westerners in my head often. I question the American’s glorification of violence, and am left with no real answer. Instead, I find myself bargaining with the Western fascination aesthetic and conservation. What about the destruction of buildings? What about humanity’s oldest villages in Raqa’a? What about the Roman ruins in Palmyra? What about the Old City of Damascus?
Declared world heritage sites, I questioned why the world did not care for these places. I know Westerners will never care for the life of an Arab, but can I convince them to understand the pain of an Arab? Destruction and reconstruction engulfed my mind, and the Westerner left. Can historic sites be mourned in the same way as people can be mourned?
Should we rebuild history to maintain a nationalistic identity, but forget the millions of lives lost? Nationalistic reconstruction reinforced itself as the forefront of my interrogation. Wood found its way into my investigation, due as both the material basis of construction and the medium of the Damascene marquetry tradition. If I cannot find a national identity or an equal space in an image, maybe I can find one in craft. Woodworking finds itself in the homes of every Damascene family and stands as a secular, non-regional, non-ethnic, nationalistic identity marker. (Mind you, I do not believe in a single Syrian, or Damascene identity, culture, or politics. I seek to investigate nostalgia and image). Unlike any city or building, this craft developed by Syrians centuries ago and maintained by the contemporary Syrian does not hold the same inflammatory implications as modern image sourcing (to my knowledge at least) - and as such demands presence. The construction of Arabic marquetry guides the composition of the fragmented Google Earth photos, manipulating the imaging as if it were the physical construction of an object and space. By combining the structural history of Damascus, such as the classic black and tan stripes of archways and the wood that fills the Arabic home, I am looking at nostalgia in its material form in the homes of diaspora. Space, city, object, and tradition take one form on these hand-constructed wood panels.
Wood stain is my paint, emphasizing the wood grain and creating texture as well as the illusion of veneering. The skies are painted with blue ink, staining the wood and establishing the landscape with natural wood grain. The blue acts as the ocean, sky, and light. It is the Aegean Sea, an escape and demise for thousands of Syrians; it is the sky, an examination of the only constant within any space; and it is the only implication of light, a reference to both God’s gift of light and God’s failures to bring light.
I offer no solutions, no guidance, and no clear political stance on Damascus. I offer a subtle interrogation of nostalgia and the dangers of romanticizing a recovering post-war nation with no clear future. I offer the broken heart of a Syrian, who desires a Syria for all Syrians.