Supported by The Cultural Export Fund - Presentation and Touring
No Place like Home by Raphael Vella
“The title of a series of ten drawings called HOMeS by Raphael Vella is a neologism. First of all it refers to Homs, Syria’s third largest and one of its oldest cities. During the still ongoing Syrian war, it was besieged for three years, from 2011 to 2014, a fate which Homs has suffered of during multiple battles since the Middle Ages. The second meaning of the title HOMeS obviously refers to any building used as a home.
The motives of the pencil drawings were taken from Syrian war press photos. Their individual titles resemble catch words of real-estate for sale advertisements, though we are immediately stopped in our thoughts by looking at the drawings themselves. They are of a war-torn cityscape in ruins, houses abandoned by the people, streets deserted. On closer look we realize that, snugly nestled within the ruins of this ghost town, in each drawing there stands but one pristine building, an icon of 20th century Western modernist architecture, barely visible within the surrounding chaos...
This series of drawings by Raphael Vella is a quiet, non-propagandistic way of making a historical, political, and social anti-war statement all-in-one within an art context. War and peace have symbolically met in one and the same image - WAR though is overpowering peace to the nth degree.”
Michael P. Bock
15 September - November 30, 2016
Opening: September 14, 7pm
Artist's Talk: September 14, 6pm
The Delegation of the European Union
2175 K Street NW| Entrance on 22nd Street
Washington DC
USA
Submitting ...
Saving ...
Any applications related to this entity, will also be automatically deleted.
