Floating children, kites and birds at Art on 56th

BEIRUT: If you enter Gemmayzehs Art on 56th gallery this month, youll come face-to-face with children playing with kites and surrounded by birds.

These jolly, candid scenes are not the only things Syrian artist Reem Yassouf wanted to communicate through her artworks. Childs Message, which features around 25 mixed-media works, consists of Yassoufs representations of children both living and dead. Her work avoids becoming morbid, however, functioning instead as an artistic vision of what she does not want to put into words.

Viewers will notice an installation of paper kites hanging from the ceiling. On the threads, visitors of the gallery have pinned messages detailing what they wish for: Some of them wish for peace, while others hope the violence in Syria will abate.

The installation conveys an impression of innocence, appealing to the childlike side of viewers.

The artworks enable onlookers to immerse themselves in Yassoufs gentle visions of childhood, in which the living hang out with the dead. The soft, subtly shaded works emanate a peaceful atmosphere, negating any potentially pessimistic reading.

Yassouf avoids drawing features on her subjects smooth faces, leaving viewers to interpret their gender through clues such as the length of their hair.

Most of the artists works evince a complex process of layering. Added one layer at a time, the backgrounds of each canvas form a labyrinth. By perusing them carefully, viewers can decipher the sequence by which Yassouf deployed her paintbrush.

At first glance, many of the works seem two-dimensional. However, the game of light and shadow, the light and dark hues of paint, come together to give the canvasses a third dimension.

A hidden message appears to smuggle inside each artwork for those who look: one of freedom. Yassouf has painted children with their eyes hidden by blindfolds, reaching their hands out toward birds, or tightly holding the strings of kites, as though wishing to fly away.

There is no specific context to the works that specifies the place, time or nature of these thwarted longings for freedom, but some viewers may assume that Yassouf is depicting the lives of Middle Eastern children.

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Floating children, kites and birds at Art on 56th