Sara Shamma<\/a> is a successful artist from Damascus, who travels back and forth from her exiled life in London to her art studio at home. Born in 1975, she grew up in Syria of the 1980s and 1990s, under the reign of Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar assumed authority on the passing of his father in 2000. What were the arts like under the Assads, during Sara\u2019s formative years? \u201cThe damage of the Assad era on art and culture,\u201d opines Syrian photographer Omar Berakdar, in conversation with TMR\u2019s senior art critic Arie Amaya-Akkermans, \u201cis too deep. Hafez understood the artists\u2019 need for freedom of speech, and therefore kept the art scene under heavy surveillance by Syria\u2019s security apparatus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIn her own way, Sara Shamma is a prototypical Syrian artist, both an insider and an outsider, neither an activist nor someone with overt political views, yet who nonetheless acknowledges that politics in a country like Syria are inevitable, and that she has perhaps benefitted from a degree of privilege. When her career in her Damascus was just beginning to flourish, she was in demand as a portraitist, and she was asked to paint Asma al-Assad, Bashar\u2019s wife. This isn\u2019t a commission she would consider today.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhen I did that portrait,\u201d she explains, \u201cit was during a period when I did a lot of portraits for many people. At the time, I painted businessmen, young people, and the wife of the president \u2014 I said, why not? I will do it… It was an important experience for me to dig inside each person. I still sometimes do portraits, but the last portraits I\u2019ve done were for an actor and actress that I exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art. It was something I enjoyed doing because they are friends. Their faces were inspiring to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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