16 April 2024
Shada Safadi
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Shada Safadi, (born 1982, Majdal Shams, occupied Syrian Golan Heights), Syrian artist recognised for her painting and etching oveure. A graduate of Damascus University in Fine Arts and cofounder of the Fateh Al Mudarris Centre for Arts and Culture, Safadi intertwines personal narratives with political landscapes.
Her artwork, awarded and showcased internationally, delves into themes of identity and displacement, resonating with her lived experience between the occupied Golan Heights and Ramallah. Safadi’s commitment to artistic expression has led her to complete residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and Alserkal Art Foundation in Dubai, enriching her praxis.
For When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor, Shada Safadi is presenting Impossibility (2022), a series of three works on paper consisting of braille print and salt.
Impossibility represents a continuously transforming map, revealing a love letter inscribed in Braille. The words metamorphose through salt, becoming a dynamic cloud in perpetual motion—a manifestation of the changing nature of love. The correspondence takes place between two characters, one disguised as a fish, the other as a bird. In this clandestine exchange, certain phrases merge into the ethereal Nun Qutna cloud, which is a harbinger of rain and prosperity for farmers in the occupied Syrian Golan.
As the cloud spreads organically, seeping through the layers, it mingles with the expressions of love between fish and bird, precipitating a cascade of rain—a metaphorical resurgence of nourishment and benevolence on earth. However, like the enigmatic language of Braille, the cloud conceals the subtleties of the love story, veiled by societal constraints that make their union impossible.
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