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العربية
The forced exodus did not prevent him from spreading his art which accompanied him on his journey out of his hometown, Deir Ezzor where he spent his boyhood, to Idlib city.
Samer Al-Nasser is a 40-year-old man from Deir Ezzor, an artist of many talents and all of them are related to the arts of painting, sculptures, handicrafts, and decorative designing.
D24 network interviewed the artist Samer Al-Nasser and he granted us the following speech.
Al-Nasser said:
“I am Samer Al-Nasser from Deir Ezzor city, I lived in the old Al-Hamidiyah neighborhood, and I did not leave it until 2017, after the barbaric campaign of the Assad regime, I have adored art since I was a child and I took up drawing as a hobby, until I found myself a captive of the paintbrush, colors, and the tools of design and sculpture.
And he continued saying:
“I was practicing my ritual of painting and handicrafts in an old shop, part of my father’s house, which overlooks Al-Hamidiyah park in Al-Hamidiyah neighborhood, taking it as a studio and a workshop, and from the beauty of nature of the neighbouring park, I was drawing inspiration to translate my passion into paintings and works of art.”
Samer added:
“The Silence of the beauty I was devoting to myself was torn by the roaring of bullets and explosions coming from the Assad regime’s military machine, and suddenly I had to cope with the new situation that was imposed on my city, the neighborhood park, my father’s house and my studio, consequently my paintings and my works began subconsciously taking up the details of the events which My beloved city Deir Ezzor was going through, I noticed that my paintings began to be dominated by dark colors such as black and grey and something of red, and I started diligently to make a model for every feature in Deir Ezzor that was destroyed by the Assad forces, and Al-Jisr Al-Mualaq (the suspension bridge) had the largest share of my work after being destroyed by the Assad regime, So I prepared more than one design for Deir Ezzor’s suspension bridge.
And he went on to say:
“The revolution imposes on the artist to melt in reality, and that’s what happened to me, so in the last years most of my works covered the issue of detainees in the Assad regime’s jails, martyrs and massacres, and despite the magnitude of our tragedy I have not forgotten our great and main issue, the Palestinian issue, and devoted part of my work to cover events from the Palestinian uprising and painted prisoners of the Zionist entity.
The artist Samer Al-Nasser concluded his speech by saying:
“In the places where we were displaced, we face many difficulties, including how the local community is looking at this type of art which some times they found it strange and weird, and also we have the problems of services and at the top of the list is electricity, my work continuously needs electricity and unfortunately it is not available, and the last obstacle we have here is the absence of an organization or a body that brings artists together and tries to find solutions to their own problems and concerns, and still the biggest problem for me is being away from Deir Ezzor which I adore, so as the son of Homs longs for the clock tower of Homs, the son of Hama longs for its water mills, and the son of Damascus longs for it’s old alleys and its Umayyad Mosque, and I am like them long for the Euphrates, the bridge, and even the sand storms of our Deir Ezzor.
