By Alma Salem
On December 8, 2024, the statues crumbled, the walls of tyranny collapsed, and the echoes of revolution—whispered in the dark, painted on ruinous facades, carried in the dust of exiled feet—became the anthem of a liberated Syria. The fall of 54 years of the rule of Assadis was not only the end of a dictatorship; it was the reclamation of breath, of space, of voice. It was the resurrection of a tortured nation long denied the right to imagine freely, the right of life.
For over a decade, I have wielded curation as resistance, forging spaces not as mere exhibitions but as sites of insurgency, radical reclamations where art defied disappearance and exile refused to be an elegy. My curatorial practice has not sought to preserve the past but to intervene in history itself, ensuring that Syrian art was not only remembered but reborn, not as a monument to suffering but as a force of infinite transformation.
Today, as we stand at the precipice of a new Syria, I do not see this as the closing of a struggle but the opening of a horizon. If the past decade was about survival, the next must be about creation. If revolution demanded defiance, then freedom demands
beauty. The dust has settled, the silence has been broken, and in its place, we must now compose a new visual language—one that is not haunted by destruction, but illuminated by the sheer, undeniable act of aesthetic existence.
This is not a retrospective. It is a manifesto. It is the record of a revolution in curation, the testament of a decade in which art refused to kneel.
SYRIA THIRD SPACE (2015): ART WITHOUT BORDERS, IDENTITY WITHOUT CHAINS
Exile is a wound, but it is also an expansion. It is the forced dismemberment from one’s land, but also the radical possibility of remaking oneself beyond the architecture of oppression. Syria Third Space emerged from this paradox.
The first waves of Syrian displacement carried with them not just bodies, but an existential question: Where does identity reside when home is taken? The world demanded that we define ourselves through absence, through nostalgia, through loss. I refused.
Third Space was not a lamentation of the homeland but a cartography of the possible—a conceptual territory unbound by borders, a realm where Syrian artists could forge new expressions unshackled from the tyranny of nostalgia or the voyeurism of Western pity.
It was not about exhibiting exile. It was about turning exile into an artistic act.
At its heart was the concept of the artist-citizen—a creative force whose belonging was no longer tied to geography but to artistic agency itself. The exhibition featured 35 works, each one challenging the notion of Syria as a fixed entity, instead presenting it as a fluid, evolving artistic nation—one that existed across continents, through paint, sound, and image.
SYRIA SIXTH SPACE (2017): NOMADIC FUTURES, ROOTLESS FREEDOM
If Third Space was about constructing an artistic homeland beyond physical borders, Sixth Space was about rejecting the need for territory altogether. It was a moving revolution, a curatorial uprising that refused fixity.
I envisioned it not as a gallery, not as an exhibition, but as a current of aesthetic resistance—a space that existed only in its unfolding, a refusal to let the revolution be contained in archives or static frames. If the revolution itself moved, so too did its art.
This was curation as migration, curation as disruption, curation as a refusal to be claimed by institutions, by museums, by the forces that sought to turn Syrian art into a relic of war.
KASHASH (2017): THE SKY IS A REVOLUTIONARY SPACE
In the Damascus of my childhood, rooftops were realms of poetry. They belonged to the Kashash—the pigeon keepers—men who sent their flocks soaring above the city, each bird a testament to flight, to freedom, to return.
But when war outraged, the rooftops became execution sites. The pigeons, like the people, were shot down. The sky was stolen.
Kashash was my act of reclaiming it. If the regime had militarized the air, then art would de-weaponize it. Through installations, video, and sound, the exhibition asked: Who owns the sky? Who controls movement? What does it mean to exist in a world where even birds are forbidden to fly?
Kashash did not simply depict displacement—it embodied its refusal. It transformed the act of flight into an insurgency, a rebellion against gravity itself.
At the heart of Kashash was a meditation on the zoology of freedom—the idea that flight, migration, and movement belong not only to humans but to all living things. The preservation of pigeon breeding was not just an homage to a tradition atca risk of fading; it was an assertion that freedom, in all its forms, must be protected as an intangible heritage.
TOURAB (2018): THE POETICS OF DUST, THE AESTHETICS OF ABSENCE
If Kashash reclaimed the sky, Tourab turned to the earth—to the dust of destruction, to the sand of burial, to the raw material of a city bombed into silence.
I built a space of negation. A gray box, a void, a gallery coated in the very material of erasure. No frames. No walls. Only dust—settling, shifting, breathing. The exhibition space itself was transformed into a gray void, a landscape where absence became the dominant aesthetic. .
Tourab did not represent loss—it was loss itself. It forced audiences into confrontation with the reality of obliteration—the cities reduced to rubble, the bodies buried under ruins, the weight of memory that lingers in particles of dust.
Beyond the immediate aesthetics of war and destruction, Tourab was also a confrontation with fossil fuel economies and environmental devastation. The dust that coated the gallery was not just a metaphor for war—it was a material residue of an entire system built on extraction, depletion, and exploitation.
Just as war machines churn through cities, turning homes into rubble, the fossil fuel industry pillages the earth, leaving landscapes uninhabitable. In this sense, Tourab was a meditation on the intimate connection between authoritarianism, war, and ecological ruin—how conflict is fueled by resource exploitation, and how both human and environmental devastation are consequences of the same brutal economic systems.
Dust is the common thread—whether the dust of collapsed buildings or the dust of burned fossil fuels. In this act of curation, the exhibition exposed the hidden violences of war beyond the battlefield—the slow, grinding violence of resource depletion, displacement, and environmental destruction.
And yet, even within this dust, there was movement—particles floating, shifting, refusing to settle. Tourab was not a funeral. It was an invocation. A reawakening.
THE DAMASCUS HOUSE: A SANCTUARY OF MEMORY AND CREATIVITY IN EXILE
The Damascus House project, developed in collaboration with Turquoise Mountain’s outreach program, brought the rich architectural and artistic heritage of Syria to the displaced children of Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps in Jordan. Rooted in the idea that cultural identity transcends borders, the exhibition reimagined the traditional Damascene home—not as a lost past, but as a living space of memory, resilience, and creative expression. Through a series of hands-on workshops, children engaged in wood carving, calligraphy, tile painting, and storytelling, drawing inspiration from the intricate craft traditions of Old Damascus. This project was not simply an educational initiative; it was an act of cultural resistance against forced erasure, offering Syrian children in exile a way to reclaim their heritage, reimagine their homes, and inscribe their narratives into the ongoing story of Syria. In the heart of displacement, The Damascus House stood as a testament that home is not just a place—it is carried within, built anew through art, memory, and the act of creation.
WAVE (2022) A Feminist declaration
As part of my curatorial work during the years of the Syrian revolution, WAVE stands as a pivotal exhibition—one that merges art with political vision, transforming creative expression into an act of militanism. Curated alongside the Syrian Women’s Political Movement (SWPM) Fourth General Conference,
WAVE is not only an exhibition but a living document of feminist resistance, a space where the struggles, triumphs, and leadership of Syrian women are inscribed into history.
Through its three sections—‘Their Messages,’ ‘Their Moments,’ and ‘Their Faces’—WAVE reconstructs the revolutionary narrative from a feminist perspective. It challenges political exclusion, disrupts dominant histories, and asserts that Syrian women are not footnotes to revolution but its architects and custodians. The exhibition reflects the fluidity of resistance—like waves, Syrian women’s political, participation has surged, fractured, and reformed, yet it remains unrelenting.
As a politically engaged curator and Executive Director of SWPM since 2019, I have worked at the intersection of cultural activism and feminist advocacy, ensuring that art is not only a reflection of history but a force that shapes it.
This exhibition is part of a broader commitment in my work: to curate not just art, but movements. To challenge erasure, reimagine agency, and ensure that the revolutionary energy of Syrian women is captured, celebrated, and carried forward. WAVE is not just a reflection of the past—it is an active current, a force that will continue shaping the future
CURATION AS RESISTANCE: THE ARAB SPRING AND THE ART OF RECLAIMING SPACE
The uprisings that swept the Arab world since 2011—from Tunisia to Syria, Egypt to Lebanon—were not only political revolutions but also cultural awakenings. These movements reshaped the role of public space, memory, and artistic resistance, questioning entrenched power structures that govern cultural institutions and, ultimately, the role of the curator itself.
I was not only a witness of the Arab Spring—I was part of it. As the MENA Regional Arts Program Manager at the British Council from 2011 to 2016, I stood in the heart of revolutionary squares where art was not an ornament of protest but its pulse, reclaiming space, voice, and agency. From Tahrir to Bourguiba, Solh to Marjeh, I witnessed how creativity transcended repression, turning walls into manifestos and performances into acts of defiance.
Art in those moments was not a privilege but a necessity—a means of survival, a reclamation of dignity, and a vision for what lay beyond the barricades. I was devoted to support emerging voices navigating exile and censorship, ensuring their expressions endured beyond the urgency of the moment. This experience did not just shape my curatorial practice—it defined it, affirming my belief that art is not only a reflection of history, but an instrument in its making, a force that challenges, heals, and reimagines the possible.
These radical shifts were powerfully demonstrated during Lebanon’s October 17, 2019, uprising, where art was not only a form of protest but an act of direct political intervention. From graffiti-filled walls to performances reclaiming highways, from mass choral chants to site-specific installations, the revolution transformed Beirut into a living, breathing canvas of dissent.
One of the most striking actions was the occupation of the “Egg”—an abandoned brutalist cinema, a relic of Beirut’s civil war, and a symbol of Solidere’s privatization of the city. Artists, students, and activists took over the space, transforming it into an open forum of artistic and political resistance. The slogans scrawled on its bullet-scarred walls captured the revolution’s radical aspirations:
“Down with the system.”
“The revolution will not be curated.”
“Down with contemporary art.”
The rejection of contemporary art was, in fact, a rejection of institutionalized gatekeeping. It was a revolt against the curator as a figure of control and selection, against the hierarchies that mediate cultural production and determine what is seen, and who gets to be heard.
I arrived in Beirut not as a curator, but as a participant. And yet, in witnessing these debates, I realized that my own profession was being put on trial. What does it mean to curate in times of revolution? Should the curator step back, or is there still a role to play? Can art remain autonomous, or must it be part of the struggle?
My answer was an act of self-erasure. Before leaving Beirut, I took a spray can and wrote on the walls of the Egg: “Down with the Curator.”
FROM RESISTANCE TO AESTHETICS: A FUTURE BEYOND SURVIVAL
For more than a decade, my curation has been a struggle waged against disappearance, against silence, against the weight of forced amnesia.
But now, as Syria breathes freely, I refuse to let my art remain in the vocabulary of destruction. Revolution does not end in survival. It must move towards beauty.
I do not want my art to be bound to trauma. I want it to be bound to the sublime.
Because to curate is to create, and to create is to dream.
And the future belongs to those who dare to dream boldly.