Hamid Sulaiman

Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian artist born in 1986. He studied architecture and fine arts in Damascus. In 2011 he got arrested and tortured by the Assad regime, shortly afterwards he fled the country, first to Germany, then to Paris.

Hamid Sulaiman has been working on a comic about the life of people in the Syrian civil war since he left Damascus and fled to Europe. In it he addresses the events in his homeland, the experiences of his...

Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian artist born in 1986. He studied architecture and fine arts in Damascus. In 2011 he got arrested and tortured by the Assad regime, shortly afterwards he fled the country, first to Germany, then to Paris.

Hamid Sulaiman has been working on a comic about the life of people in the Syrian civil war since he left Damascus and fled to Europe. In it he addresses the events in his homeland, the experiences of his friends and personal, autobiographical moments. In this way, he creates a striking picture of the political situation and of everyday life in Syria. Using the mediums of drawing and comics he compresses five years of civil war - the violence, the turmoil, the disasters and the everlasting principle of hope.

On 280 sheets with about 1120 individual drawings, he depicts the everyday life of the Syrian youth in the Civil War, perpetually threatened by the Assad-regime and the IS, coping with the daily violence and searching for normality in utterly abnormal surroundings. His stories are based on his own experiences as well as on You-Tube-footage, personal impressions as well as political propaganda images, individual fates as well as iconographic news feed photos.

Ever since he has been part of several group exhibitions in Germany and France, where he attracted attention especially with his evocative, expressive ink drawings. For the last three years Hamid Sulaiman has been working on a comic, which reflects the life in Syria.

All images are from the show "Freedom Hospital" by Hamid Sulaiman in Galerie Crone, Rudi- Dutschke-Straße 26, 10969 Berlin and are there on view from 9. April until 18. Juni 2016.