Tammam Azzam – Temporary Title
We are pleased to present new works by Syrian artist Tammam Azzam, based in Berlin, in the exhibition Temporary Title. Guided by a universal humanity, his pictorial collages find artistic expression for the unrelenting suffering that people experience through unexpected attacks or wars by tyrannical rulers in the past, present, and future. Creativity in the midst of fragmentation.
The English expression “temporary title,” with which the artist titled his exhibition, is one meaning of the Arabic expression al-‘unwan al-mu’aqqat. The phrase can also be translated as “temporary address,” referring to the homelessness experienced by people who have been forced to leave their homes due to terror, war, or famine.
Syrian artists carry a unique cultural heritage and an experience of nature in all its facets. They know the uncertainties of living in an ever-changing environment. The ongoing state of war has left deep marks on the country, making it difficult to remember the past. Yet not all Syrian artists in the diaspora are war refugees.
Tammam Azzam, who has lived in Germany since 2016 and in Berlin with his family since 2018, processes destruction and suffering in his work. His pictorial, often large-format paper collages show how artists find a visual language for destruction and the search for consolation. Landscapes appear, a road leading straight into the depth of the image, and recurring trees whose bare branches and twigs stand dark against monochrome skies in blue, red, or yellow.
The choice of artistic materials and the free, creative handling of them are essential characteristics of Azzam’s new works. Art historian and Islamic art scholar Claus-Peter Haase remarks:
“The most important element is the material and its varied use in the new works—again predominantly paper scraps of all kinds, more rarely textile and organic elements. Tearing, crumpling, and cutting, as well as layering glue on different canvases or overpainting, are impulsive and unpredictable processes. Tearing (Arabic: tamzîq) appears as a key term for something that may sound like the final destruction of previous function, but which, in its mosaic-like fragmentation, contains vague and unpredictable possibilities and the power for new composition. Positivity emerges when one does not expect the new to be shaped too precisely.”
At a time when Syria is widely known as a country marked by war and destruction—and when terror and armed conflicts are increasing worldwide—Tammam Azzam shows that creativity can survive even in the most difficult circumstances. His works stand as expressions of resilience and hope amid fragmentation.
Tammam Azzam (*1980, Damascus, Syria) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus. After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, he moved to Dubai, where he began working with digital photomontage. In 2016, Azzam was invited as an Artist in Residence to the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst. There, and later in Berlin, he developed a new technique of paper collage alongside his painting practice. His fragmented compositions highlight the physical remains of conflict and the importance of rebuilding from destruction and creating something new.
His works ask questions rather than provide answers—above all about the conditio humana, the human condition, whose destructive forces bring suffering and despair, yet whose creativity continues to offer hope.
