Damascus, May 17 (SANA) Syrian visual artist Ismail Nasra has unveiled a new body of work in Damascus that shifts away from the dense colors of his earlier paintings toward a more restrained and minimalist visual language centered on silence, absence and emotional space.
The exhibition, which opened Saturday at Zawaya Art Gallery in Damascus, features 28 medium- and large-scale works created using aged and weathered fabrics whose natural textures, cracks and fading become part of the artistic composition itself.
Nasra’s paintings largely revolve around solitary female figures standing in sparse, almost empty spaces, often accompanied by birds that appear as recurring symbols of freedom and escape.
Rather than constructing detailed narratives, the artist relies on abstraction, muted palettes and negative space to evoke emotional states of isolation, waiting and introspection.
“A large part of the experience was built on the natural graphic traces left by time on the fabric,” Nasra told SANA. “I tried to create simple visual subjects capable of delivering an immediate emotional message to the viewer.”
He said the works were produced over a three-year period using old fabrics with minimal intervention through paint and drawing.
“What surprised me was how much room abstraction occupied in these works,” he added. “It allowed me to express fleeting emotions connected to experiences I have carried for a long time.”
Birds appear repeatedly throughout the exhibition, acting as poetic counterpoints to the stillness of the female figures, symbols of movement and liberation against otherwise static and confined settings.
Born in Syria, Ismail Nasra graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1987 and later earned a postgraduate diploma in painting. Over the course of his career, he has participated in numerous exhibitions in Syria and abroad and received several regional and international awards.
N.J/ABD
#CulturalScene
