“The Road to Jerusalem”… The painting as a liberal and moral stance
Since the beginning of her artistic experience three decades ago, the Lebanese visual artist Soha Sabbagh has been distinguished by a multiple identity, as her work has varied between drawing, writing, and directing, dealing with various topics in her work, inspired by political and social events in Lebanon and the region.
Despite the diversity of the topics, it carried a committed message of resistance and belonging to the cause of man defending his rights against all forms of occupation and tyranny. Within this framework, and in light of the war of extermination waged by the Israeli occupation against Gaza for more than five months, her new exhibition, “The Road to Jerusalem,” which is hosted by the “Safir Forum” in Beirut until the tenth of March, comes to confirm the artist’s position rejecting the occupation. And the supporter of resistance as a means to liberate the land.
In the exhibition, Sabbagh presents approximately forty diverse works, in which it is difficult to distinguish between an artistic style or an academic school, because she combines styles and melts colors in a crucible that reflects the explosions taking place in the Arab region, especially in Gaza and the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation that it witnesses.
From the gallery
Through the faces, bodies and objects in its paintings, the Lebanese artist is trying to draw a bridge that connects them to reality in order to express the atrocities experienced by the Palestinian people in Gaza. Yellow and red, the colors of disease and blood, are most present in the paintings. The two colors also help in expressing the bombing and explosions caused by the occupation.
The Lebanese concern is also present through experimental attempts to depict the port bombing and the popular movement. They are attempts to delve deeply into the public scene and dig up the details of everything private. The painting is the bridge that transports the general and transforms it into personal concern and worry.
The exhibition’s paintings cannot be classified as political, although their themes may seem so. They are realistic paintings that express the thoughts and feelings experienced by the artist, but before anything else, they express her position on current events. It is a painting that carries a moral and liberation stance against occupation and against tyranny.
