My personal interpretations of topics such as identity, memory and place are what drive the majority of my work. I draw connections between these broad ideas and my own unique experiences as a Syrian-American primarily through painting and printmaking. My source material comes from investigating and researching my peoples history as well as my own upbringing through childhood photographs and images of a land I haven’t embraced in over a decade.

My perception of homeland, specifically the Middle East, had been greatly affected by my American upbringing, causing me to view it as a backwards and destructive place. However, through the process of unlearning and reevaluating these superimposed stereotypes of the Middle East, I start to reclaim those ideas and manipulate them. This process results in images that call attention to Western intervention in the Middle East, and simultaneously present a more nuanced understanding of my identity. Consequently, I’ve used my limited yet newfound understanding of Syria and the Middle East in general, married with my American upbringing and childhood photographs, to develop a vocabulary of symbolic objects in which I repetitively integrate into my spaces.

Additionally, I tend to paint my spaces in a way that mirrors my privilege as an American born Arab. My vibrant color palette might seem peculiar, but I purposefully stick to this vibrancy to reflect on my privileged life and the safer environment that I grew up in, contradictory to those whom I share my other half with. I create this work to come to terms with who I am, and to embrace the fluidity and instability of my identity. I also see my practice as an opportunity to recover my origins and reevaluate what I know or what I thought I knew about myself and the place my family came from.