Lucy Gellman Photo
The last time artist Mohamad Hafez was in Damascus, waiting on a visa application that ultimately took a month and a half, it was 2011. The city was still standing strong, and he had a kind of trick. When time stopped each afternoon — the result of a long, large midday meal that ended in a city-wide siesta — he would walk the old city, taking in its Roman arches and the Great Mosque of the Umayyads, listening to birdsong and breath fuse with the daily call to prayer, and sitting in coffee shops with his new iPhone flat on the table, recording conversations quirky and banal alike. Born in Syria, raised in Saudi Arabia, and educated largely in the United States, the self-described “Midwesterner” cherished these snippets of speech, conversations between neighbors, friends and family in a language for which he had been deeply homesick.
So when two years ago, after his return to the United States, he saw “thousands of years of culture” — and its practitioners — become a target of war and international terrorism, he sprang into action, dedicated to disseminating information at home in New Haven about Syria’s violence. An architect by trade, he found himself creating models of both old Damascus and destroyed Syrian buildings and homes, large three-dimensional renderings that used plaster and paint. When those became too unwieldy, he switched to fine, dollhouse-sized pieces from scrap metal and other found refuse, works immediately eye-catching in their intricacy.
Tuesday night, those works were the conversational centerpiece of CWOS Kitchens, a new series that Artspace is rolling out during November. Organized by Director Helen Kauder with assistance from Gallery Manager Shelli Stevens and Curator Sarah Fritchey, the dinners celebrate the intersection of culinary and visual art in New Haven. The proceeds go toward keeping next year’s City Wide Open Studios free and open to the public.
The dinners are much more than a new fundraising tactic, however. Over three hours, the first expanded October’s three-week conversation about memory, material, and making into one about the way New Haveners consume and process culture. As a collaboration between Hafez, instrumentalist Moustafa Al Bakri, and chef Mazen Al-Salloumi, one of New Haven’s newest Syrian refugees, the first dinner combined the languages of aesthetic and visual absorption, giving viewers a dual portal through which to understand Hafez’s navigation of identities Syrian and American, which come together in his recent pairing of small models and voice recordings in his work.
“After coming back here, the war started, I started getting very emotionally involved, because I wanted to do something meaningful that helps the cause,” he said at the dinner, as attendees finished their plates of basbousah and madlouka, eying leftover yalanji and kabsehstill on the table. “It killed me to see this rich fabric [of Syria] being decimated — as an artist, as an architect, the pure culture that was seeping away from us. I wanted to tell the story to a wider audience, just to raise awareness. I thought that at the bare minimum the responsibility I had was to raise awareness as part of Western society. To share the stories. To show what is so rich about the region, and what is so devastating that somebody could just put all their family on a little float over the Mediterranean. How bad does it need to get for somebody to risk their lives … on a little inflatable?”
“At one time … I have to sell millions of dollars worth of corporate, glassy, modernist, clean architecture, which is great. I can do that. But when I come home, the real Mohamad also surfaces up, and that energy that’s built up from all the dark news has to go into something. If I don’t build an armature that absorbs all that negative energy, I cannot maintain a peaceful and sane life as a professional here,” he added.
It built on something he had said during an interview last week on WNHH’s Kitchen “Sync,” when I asked him whether those opposing the entry of Syrian migrants into the United States had rattled him.
“It is difficult,” he said. “I’m not going to sugar coat it. It’s very difficult. You continuously live a dual life. On one hand, we are Syrians, we have families at home, we’re very affected by the crisis. We still have families there, and I am personally and emotionally tied to the country on every aspect. That’s part of me. On the other hand, I’ve also lived more adult years in the United States. I’ve been educated here; most of my immediate family [members] are American citizens. So when somebody comes with that statement to us, do we answer as citizens of this country, that want better lives and better freedom for everybody, or do we answer as Syrian citizens with families back home? It’s very difficult. But … you have to find a balance to tell the story. Being able to be a meaningful part of a Western society, and being able to cater an Eastern story to that society in an artistic form, that needs a certain level of balance and calmness.”
That dovetailed, Fritchey said, with the whole idea behind trying CWOS Kitchens, and thinking of Hafez specifically.
“You could say that we are a visual arts community, but I think we are much more than that,” she said. “I think we understand the literary arts, and music, and the performing arts, and also the culinary arts as being a really big part of our demographic makeup … food is something that pulls a lot of transient residents to stay longer.”
She and Hafez now both have reason to celebrate: the event succeeded wildly in bringing people together. Attendees listened closely to firsthand stories of Syrian refugees that are coming into New Haven and other towns in the Northeast. The dinner ended in almost an hour of questions around Hafez’s recent piece, “Unsettled Nostalgia,” forging the sort of dialogue for which he had been hoping, in which Syria transitioned from a concept to a pressing social obligation. How many refugees were coming into the city? What was day-to-day life in Damascus now? Did Al-Salloumi have a family, one attendee wanted to know. What could New Haveners do to break down barriers, asked another.
“In my mind, if a viewer is touched at a deeper level — and yes, they might leave the scene on a sad note, or thinking about the atrocities that are happening — then the work has achieved its purpose” he said.
To listen to the full interview, click on or download the audio above. To find out more about CWOS Kitchens, the next of which will feature the Doom Noodle team on November 17, visit the organization’s website or follow them on Facebook or Twitter.