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It’s a long way from the Old Town of Damascus to Wong Chuk Hang, an industrial area on the south side of Hong Kong Island. The distance seems even further in the context of the past five years of Syria’s civil war, which has cut the nation off from the wider world. Yet Syrian artist Fadi Yazigi doesn’t seem particularly fazed when I meet him in early November at Wong Chuk Hang’s Yallay Gallery. Having travelled in a circuitous route from another exhibition in Thessaloniki, Greece, to attend the opening of his solo show “Contemporary Art from Syria,” he is naturally tired, but also open to discussing his work. Since graduating with a degree in sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1988, Yazigi has handcrafted work across various media, creating pieces that explore the psyche and daily lives of Syrian people, while always retaining a raw emotional quality. The tragic ongoing conflict of his nation has heightened the urgency of Yazigi’s art, but has not changed his focus on a fundamental level. Yazigi accepts that a quick resolution to Syria’s crisis may be unlikely, but he is resolute in his decision to stay based in his native country. With his family still in Damascus, he considers it his duty to remain and express the dreams and feelings of everyday Syrians through his art.
If somebody is walking in to see your work for the first time, and they don’t know a lot about you, what would you want them to know about the pieces?
I started working with these figures when I graduated in 1988. [I’m usually] trying to find something from the atmosphere around me, from society, from people’s faces, from the dimensions in their knowledge.
I heard your studio is in the Old City in Damascus, in the Jewish Quarter, and that you’re really inspired by what’s going on around in the neighborhood?
Yes, from all the people around me, and not only in this area. My building is 150 years old. I renovated the inside to be a studio, with light, with windows. I like it. It’s a very quiet, nice place to work. And the area outside, it is full of life. People’s families [have lived] there since 50 or 100 years ago. So [I like that I get to be in] contact with them, to live with them, to know how they think, how they’ve changed their thinking during the last five years. My home is farther away than this place, like 17 kilometers, but I go there daily to spend most of the day. Though at one point that became hard, because [the area] got bombed many times.
FADI YAZIGI, Triptique, 2001, acrylic on canvas, (left to right) 183 × 93 cm, 176 × 103 cm, 177 × 102 cm. Courtesy Yallay Gallery, Hong Kong.
Can you still get to the studio right now?
Yes, thank god that I can, because I can’t manage without.
Is there still a community of artists in Damascus?
Yes, there still is. It’s shrinking now, it’s not like before. I was having many friends come everyday to my studio; now every week a friend or two would come, but not more.
In spite of such circumstances, you’re planning on staying in Damascus. Why?
It’s part of my influence, and I feel it is my responsibility to do—to stay there and work hard, and to document what is going on. This is meant in an emotional way; it’s not really “documenting,” like for a film. Everything is influenced by what is going on.
Your most recent works comprise small clay squares. Could you talk about them briefly?
Yes, these are from 2014, and one from 2015. It is my diary book.
Making a smaller work and just using clay as the medium, was this shift and choice in material due to its accessibility and mobility?
No, since 1999 I have been making works in this size. Sometimes I make big sculptures, sometimes I make small ones. Now I’m bronzing my works, and I make these sculptures in Beirut. There is no foundry in Syria [anymore], so I take my things to Beirut to make it bronze.
Do you have your own kiln in Syria?
Yes, I have my own kiln in Syria, and it is in my studio. But currently it is very hard to fire up. It should be set at 950 [degrees Celsius], but nowadays the electricity comes on for three hours and then is lost for three hours, and I don’t have a generator. When the kiln reaches 500 degrees the electricity cuts off and will drop to 150, so you have to wait three hours to push it [back up].
FADI YAZIGI, Untitled, 2009, mixed media on canvas, 85 × 120 cm. Courtesy Yallay Gallery, Hong Kong.
Do you think that even before 2011, when the war started, your pieces were expressing similar themes regarding the Syrian people and their experiences?
Yes. But now as I’m seeing here with my works in the gallery, if you compare my recent pieces with this one [referring to a brightly colored untitled painting from 2009], I feel I’m getting more tough and more realistic now. With this [earlier work] there are some dreams . . . something softer before.
Are you having any difficulties right now getting your artwork out of Syria?
Things are getting very hard now. Now we don’t have [the postal service] to even get invitations, for example. You can’t get a visa, except that the Hong Kong visa was issued by the Chinese Embassy, which is in Damascus, so I was lucky. But if you want to have a visa for Europe or America you have to go to Beirut, and as a Syrian that’s getting harder and harder.
Do you spend a lot of time in Beirut?
No. It is a place of transit, if you need to go or have work to do. Sometimes I take a taxi in the morning [to Beirut] and then again in the night to come back. Or I spend one night, finish the next morning and return. The only window we have is the Beirut border, which is still “safe.”
In some of your works, especially the clay squares, even though it feels dark, I do sense a lot of love and affection.
You know, during this kind of life amidst war, you have to constantly remind yourself that you are still alive. This is a very important thing. Another day will come, so you have to be involved with this life, you have to be in love, you have to have fun, you have to be in good relations with people, you have to have a nice lunch . . . You have to encourage yourself that there is continuity for life.
“Contemporary Art from Syria” is on view at Yallay Gallery, Hong Kong, until November 28, 2015.