NOW AND TEN

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SAFWAN DAHOUL
(SYRIAN, B. 1961)
Untitled (Woman Standing in the Rain)
signed in Arabic, signed and dated ‘DAHOUL 03’ (upper left)
acrylic on canvas
47º x 39¡in. (120 x 100cm.)
Painted in 2003
US$100,000-150,000
AED370,000-550,000
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.
LITERATURE:
Ayyam Gallery (ed.), Safwan Dahoul, Damascus/Dubai/Beirut 2009
(illustrated in colour, pp. 20, 36 & 235).
Safwan Dahoul’s work exemplifes the legacy of traditional visual arts at the
Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus, his alma mater. After
studying there under the mentorship of leading Syrian modernists, he earned
a doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons, Belgium. He
returned to Damascus after acquiring his degree, greatly impacting a younger
generation of artists when he began teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts. Not
only has he been an instigator of great change in the realms of contemporary
Syrian art, but he has also been a harbinger of dynamic acts of expression
during a time of great change in his home country.
Focusing on fguration in most of his works, Dahoul relies on his subjects
to relay his emotional and psychological states of being, concentrating on
the conditions of longing, solitude and estrangement, which he experienced
throughout his life. His work is not strictly biographical, yet it contains a great
deal of personal pathos. He is able to relay this through his work by rendering
a subject with a highly visible sense of isolation during moments of personal,
subconscious or external crisis, be it in a moment of personal mourning, loss
or - ostensibly - during a regional political crisis.
The artist in front of one of his works, 2009.
© Ayyam Gallery.
These ideas of states of being are expressed in the subject’s very physical body.
Dahoul mostly depicts female subjects, whose faces and bodies are contorted
to emphasise the magnitude of their psychological state. In Untitled (Woman
Standing in the Rain), Dahoul’s iconic female protagonist evolves within a
confned environment that denotes a profound psychological confusion. The
claustrophobic sentiment provoked by the presence of a blackened window,
which seems to close on the woman’s fgure, is further enhanced by her
defeated body language. With arms tightly crossed on her chest and her
head bowing down, she huddles underneath an umbrella while her delicate
fngers grasp its handle. As Dahoul’s heroine seeks to fnd shelter underneath
her protective screen, the impossibility of encountering rain inside the house
leads to consider the presence of indomitable forces. Rendered in the artist’s
habitual greyscale, the highly emotional scene rises in tension as the female’s
shut eyes, hunched shoulders and bowed head reveal the expectation of
imminent danger. Inspired by the artist’s quest for a refuge within his own
realm of painting, Untitled (Woman Standing in the Rain) verbalises the
vulnerability of human life in the face of the world’s unpredictable violence.
(in collaboration with Marina Iordan)
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