Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Palestinian refugees expressed their adherence to their national identity, each in his own way, and among them was the visual artist Yahya Hussein Ashmawi, whose career began through his drawings on the walls of the Yarmouk camp in Syria, in which he was born and raised.
Biography and Path The
visual artist Yahya Ashmawi was born on May 5, 1968 in the Yarmouk camp. His origins go back to the village of Tantura in the district of the city of Haifa, the bride of the Palestinian coast. Zionist gangs committed a horrific massacre against its people, in which dozens were killed. He currently resides in the Kingdom of Sweden since 2014. He underwent various courses in arts and Arabic calligraphy while he was in Damascus and worked in the teaching field for a short period, but he was very interested in volunteer work, especially for the children in the Yarmouk camp.
During his recent asylum in Sweden, he contributed to individual and group art exhibitions. Among his solo exhibitions are: This World (Black and White) exhibition, Damascus, Yarmouk 2012, New Refugee exhibition / Östersund city - northern Sweden 2015, Messages to the World exhibition / Helsingborg city - southern Sweden 2016, caricature exhibition / Saber’s Diaries / Helsingborg city 2016, a story exhibition. Canaanite Love / Malmo City - Sweden 2019, Canaanite Love Story Exhibition / Copenhagen City - Denmark 2020. As for his participation in group exhibitions, it was as follows: the annual exhibitions of the General Union of Palestinian Artists in Damascus, Eye on Damascus / Black White Exhibition / Damascus 2014, Welcome exhibition / joint exhibition with Swedish artists / Östersund city in northern Sweden - 2015, Versrum exhibition Sweden with the participation of 16 refugee artists, Viking exhibition - Helsingborg 2018, Swedish Red Cross exhibition city of Helsingborg / Sweden 2019, joint exhibition with artist Rana Bishara from Palestine / Landskrona city And Malmo/Sweden, in addition to many participations
The walls of Yarmouk.
Yarmouk camp was not just an ordinary place. It was the capital of the diaspora, and its name was Little Palestine, with the names of its neighborhoods, mosques, schools, and even its children, as the visual artist Yahya Ashmawi says. The camp walls were his first start, and the encouragement for his artistic talent was great from his family, neighbors, and friends.
The developments of the revolutionary and political events that the Palestinian cause went through gave the visual artist Yahya Ashmawy the impetus for his launch of plastic art and his ongoing contributions, but he was initially interested in the Palestinian poster, as he was greatly influenced by the late Swiss artist Marc Rodin, “Jihad Mansour,” and he dealt with the paintings in several artistic and color directions. With different materials, Al-Ashmawy’s paintings went through multiple stages: the paper/black and white painting stage, the oil color painting stage, the black and white acrylic color stage, the quick paper montage stage accompanying the events in Syria and the Yarmouk camp, the caricature stage with the character of Saber, the acrylic stage and Swedish exhibition paintings, the stage The blue painting, and his attention was focused on the simple people of his people, who are the main incubator and therefore it is necessary to see their aspirations and suffering. He focused in most of his artistic works on highlighting the contemporary Palestinian and historical Canaanite symbols, as well as the role of embroideries and the great legacy of this art.Its components and implications.
The bitterness of asylum and immigration to Sweden did not prevent Al-Ashmawy from continuing his artistic message. On the contrary, it was an important opportunity and a major transformation in the content, components, and connotations of the painting. Here, art was supposed to be a message through which the history of the Palestinian people and their cause was presented, exhuming the history and the Palestinian Canaanite myth, and integrating it with the history of the struggle of the Palestinian people and their ongoing struggle. This was done in a special way, the content of which became clear in its new artistic state. The artist Yahya was pleased to participate in several exhibitions through strong discussions with The European audience, where love, adoration, beauty, the land, the right to defend and protect it, and the consolidation of the Palestinian national identity, are the symbols and elements of his paintings and the style he adopted to convey his message to others. Thus, it can be asserted that the artist Yahya Ashmawy’s brush was and still is a constant resistance on one of the fronts of confrontation with an occupier who is trying to Obliterating the Palestinian national identity, but to no avail.
News about Yahya Ashmawi
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To