WASHINGTON // Being the Syrian ambassador to the United States is not an easy job. There must be times when it is frustrating to be the representative of a country which America has designated a rogue state, criticised for its relationship with Iran and taken issue with over alleged support of the insurgency in Iraq.
For the eight years of the Bush presidency, the administration adopted a policy of “not talking” with the Syrian regime.
Mention a trip to Syria to most Americans, and jaws drop; they associate the country more readily with subterfuge and centrifuges than with souks and citadels.
So, very soon after his appointment as Syrian ambassador to the US in 2004, Imad Mustapha tried a new tactic to reshape his country’s image abroad. He took his love of all things cultural, sized up what Syria had to offer the US, and began an extraordinary diplomatic mission to take the modern, vibrant Syrian art scene to his newly-adopted home.
Sitting in the embassy in Washington, DC, he gesticulates at the abstract paintings on his walls – a part of his collection of paintings and sculptures by modern Syrian artists. They form the focus of a regularly updated blog and of his diplomatic work with which he tries to build understanding of Syria.
“Culture counts,” he says firmly. “It opens doors.”
Mr Mustapha recalls clearly the moment four years ago when he visited a Toulouse Lautrec exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Since his wife was away, he thought he might turn the experience into an article for one of the art periodicals he used to write for in Syria. He began taking notes in Arabic, attracting the attention of a polite American man who enquired whether he was an art historian. “No,” Mr Mustapha replied, laughing about it now, “I am a diplomat, I am just writing down my impressions.”
A month later came an invitation to dine alongside the famous Impressionist paintings at the Phillips Collection. He does not say so, but possibly in 2005, as the insurgency raged in Iraq, social invitations were thin on the ground for a Syrian diplomat. So he went, admired the art, met influential people and discovered that the polite man at the National Gallery had been the director.
It was shortly after this, he says, when the relationship between the US and Syria deteriorated and “people like Fox News started to paint a very vile picture of Syria”.
Mr Mustapha’s response was to paint a different picture of Syria.
Since then, he has organised a number of art shows, the largest of which was in 2007, held at the American University Museum. He features the works of distinguished artists from Syria on his blog, gives tours of his personal collection and he and his wife find themselves being sought as advisers on Syrian art.
Syrian art is getting a good showing in the US. The late Louay Kayyali’s oil paintings of stylised Syrian figures sold for more than US$100,000 (Dh367,000) and Ahmad Mualla’s turbulent canvasses were seen at the Art Basel Miami Beach art show.
The idea of artists painting freely in Syria, says Mr Mustapha, shattered preconceptions. People came up to him and said, “do you mean these painters are living and working in Syria?”.
While he and other Syrian art devotees agree that there is no one defining characteristic of the paintings, the works on his walls are very muscular and modern in style. Syria’s reputation as a closed and repressive state seems at odds with the dozens of painters working in avant-garde styles.
Syrian painters, he went on, benefit from the lively faculty at the University of Damascus, and, “there is a vibrant scene … with a number of young painters springing up”. Particularly beneficial to his national pride, he says, is that, “these young people are not only talented but have transcended the need to emulate European schools – they start from within.” Many paintings take traditional Syrian folk motifs – for example birds – and interpret them in new ways, using techniques like screen printing as well as painting.
There were also diplomatic benefits.
“When I started this,” says Mr Mustapha, “some US diplomats were not very friendly to Syria, but they would come and discuss art and their promotion of art in other countries – at least it opens a start for a friendly conversation.”
Marjory Ransom, who lives not far from the embassy, has a painting by a different Syrian painter on every wall of her apartment.
“I think Syrian art is extraordinary,” she says.
Mrs Ransom was the first female US foreign service officer to serve in the Arab world, and was in Damascus first as a public affairs officer with a cultural focus in the 1980s, and then as deputy head of mission in the 1990s.
“I absolutely support Imad Mustapha,” she said, “I think what he is doing is right.”
Relationships built on art and culture, she said, “withstand different circumstances. They bring people together in a very personal way.”
However, in the Syrian art scene she was involved with — and at one time she had works by around 50 artists — there were many restrictions on artists. “I don’t think the situation has changed much, is my impression from afar.”
Artists who addressed political issues in their work, or whose subject matter appeared to be human rights in Syria, either lived in exile or took the risk of being banned from travel or even imprisoned by the authorities. For this reason, she said, when she asked her painter friends about the meaning of their work “they changed the subject”.
Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian academic who now works with the National Endowment for Democracy, a non-governmental organisation, also looked to put Syrian art in the context of a restricted society.
“The first thing is freedom of expression,” he said, “and if you don’t have basic rights you don’t have freedom of expression.”
Pointing to the limited number of newspapers and magazines and their adherence to the “party line”, Syria, he said, ranked 165 out of 175 in the 2009 annual report by Reporters Without Borders on press freedom.
The restrictions extended to people working in the creative arts, he added, saying that some artists, novelists and filmmakers were banned from travel “because the national organisations don’t want people to speak out about human rights in Syria outside, where they can’t control it”.
Mr Mustapha looks surprised when asked about this. “I don’t believe there are limitations on artists leaving Syria,” he says, adding that, “artists have more freedom than the overwhelming majority of Syrians.”
Miriam Cooke, an expert on Syria working at Duke University in the US, wrote Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official, a book published in the 1990s asserting that Syrian authorities allowed some carefully controlled freedom of expression to give the impression that Syrians enjoyed basic freedoms. She called the phenomenon “commissioned criticism”. Now, she said, it seems that artists may have more freedoms than other Syrians as the incentive to give the impression of a changed society is stronger. “Obama is making overtures now,” she said, and Syrian authorities are looking to demonstrate cultural freedoms as they seek to build their relationship with the US.
Mr Mustapha said he plans to continue his work to raise cultural awareness of his country. “People ignore everything about Syria in the US. The US is ubiquitous – in Syria there is American cinema, songs, CNN … Syrians still have some misconceptions but it’s not the same.”
There are still negative reports about Syria in the press, he says, but he demonstrates the advantage of culture rather than politics as he says that whenever a newspaper “sends a travel person to Syria, they write wonderful things. The moment things become apolitical, we get wonderful reviews.”
Article Source:thenational.ae
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