Untitled, Work by Fadi Yazigi, curated by Myriam Jackiche Atelier, Damascus, Syria, 1 January–1 December 2019

Fadi Yazigi’s exhibition Untitled creatively examines the effects of historical and political instabilities in his homeland over the last decade. Yazigi’s audience stands in the centre of an array of crafted exhibits that range from medium- to large-size everlasting bronze sculptures and brittle clay reliefs to figurative paintings decorating the surfaces of friable rice-paper canvas and fragile daily baked bread. The exhibition’s title is metaphorical: it embodies the ambiguities, inequalities and uncertainties in the daily lives of ordinary people in war-struck Syria. The ‘everyday use’ materiality of Yazigi’s craft assumes a form that reflects the complexities, contradictions and negotiations in the ‘trope of the everyday’ in the region and on a global scale. Yazigi’s work centres on people and human emotions with a nostalgic feeling towards the beings he meets. Yazigi smears oil, ink and acrylics as he employs techniques of drawing, painting, sculpting and moulding, using earth-sourced materials like paper, bread, soil and metal presenting the lives of ordinary people and their humane emotions.