I wrote many posts about Syria, ignoring that artists were expressing in their paintings the Syrian genocide.
Today, on Twitter, I discovered Marc Nelson’s art: his paintings of Syrian children, very graphic, tell us more than a long discourse.The painting of the header is property of the creator and of his Twitter account.
I share his point of view, and yesterday I changed the header of this blog : to a calm sea , I substituted the famous “Guernica” of Picasso.By its immensity, the distortion of the symbols of Spain, the cry to the sky, the use of the black color , it shows the horror of the destruction by the German Panzers of the whole town;the bombing of Guernica is now considered as the preliminary of WWII.
And now we see these Syrian children, who cry to nobody, because there is not sky on them, no testimony , and the genocide they are victims of: the first one of the 21th Century, it is said.
We don’t count genocides, we try to have the more precise number of victims to the accountability for the responsible (s).
For the responsible, these numbers are only numbers, by the dispossession he made of their humanity. Art makes them human again, with their suffering.
Thanks to Marc Nelson, the Syrian kids can be ours. His paintings, shared on Twitter, are used in schools, to show what is the Syrian genocide: as the media don’t provide reliable information, and as teens are not interested in foreign policy, Marc Nelson’s paintings can interest this public.
This avoids the confusing between the “virtual” horror, this of games, of play stations, of movies, of touched up photos, and the real one: this of the world they have no interest in.
A dialogue about these paintings and the reality they share is necessary.
For this generation, “Guernica”is unknown; WWII is, too.
Even the Rwanda is far away .
Syria, their present, has to take form: painting gives it one.
