the Unlived
love , life , freedom
What if the shadow wore colors, not just gray?
Here it stood, dense and heavy, then drifted away.
And suddenly, the hues I see, alive and bright,
Not mere shadows, but echoes of fleeting light—
Fragments of a conversation, whispers from the past,
Or dreams that take form, in a spell so vast.
How do I craft from this a world, boundless, deep? A sigh in the canvas, where heavy thoughts seep, Yet those delicate colors, like a fevered dream, Haunt me as I wander, in a vivid stream. Sometimes, I see fish or a tree taking flight,
And the colors become figures, dancing in the night.
I don’t paint my dreams; they pull me away,
Leading me to realms where the heart longs to stay.
I painted a fish, and with a stroke, it became
a portal of desire, not bound by name.
Its tail turned to tresses, in a twist of fate—
I didn’t intend it, yet it called me to create.
A world I crave, without tangible life,
A transparent existence, free from the strife.
We live it within, where reality fades,
In the depths of our souls, where this magic invades.
I'll nurture this vision and breathe it to life, A realm born anew, beyond worldly strife. I see horizons, fantasies, colors that roam, Escaping their limits to find a home.
Azza. 2025
Saleh Barakat Gallery
YEARNING توْق
أن أفعل كُّل شيء و كُّل شيء ...
أن أطير وأسقط واضرب فأهرب..
أثور واهدأ أعشق وأكره
أموت فأحيا أحمل وألد
أطير وأسقط أخاف وأثور
ارتجف وادفأ أبكي وأضحك
هكذا هو إيقاع رفرفة اجنحتها!
أخذ و رٌد يصنعان مسار حركتها.
كنبضات قلب ولهفته، تّواٌق، عطش
لفعل كُل شيء واّللاشيء…
عزه أبو ربعية
Traces
On a smooth copper plate, I draw the scene with a sharp instrument after I put the soft wax that isolates the acid from the white etch that I want, and etches the black that I painted.
I add gray and black spaces with rosin at times, and fabric materials at other times.
To see the result of what I etch, I put a sticky ink on the plate, and start cleaning for it to go into the pores that I etched. The drawing begins to appear. I place the plate on the press machine, and a wet cotton paper on top of it. With very high pressure, the press machine rotates to convey all that was etched on the paper, and I see the result of all what was etched. It is like giving birth.
I get several copies of that plate, repeating the printing for a few copies.On that paper I see all the traces I left on the plate.
Printmaking is extremely delicate, any trace you leave will eventually appear in the printing, and this is what I want to record in this work.
That`s why I chose printmaking, as it preserves those traces, without which the work cannot be complete.
I was born in 1980. I grew up with no written or drawn reference recording what were happening in the1980s, and I do not want for the next generation to float without memory.
I had to find a justification for myself: How can I stand survival after I was forced to leave my home country?
Seven years into the revolution in search of our identity, and then I was so simply expelled in 2017. I wrote on the wall of my studio in Beirut: «Meaningless is my existence if I don’t draw.»
I will record what I have been through and will leave the traces in my etching work, in a studio that is not mine and an apartment that I do not belong to.
On A Thread
On that thread, between life and absence
on her green leaf I stand
a crow doesn't care
between wind and water
there is a consort
what a beautiful trip…