Rebuilding Aleppo: Memory, Loss and Creation

A one-day conference exploring the role of the arts in memory, loss, and creation

7 June 2018, 9.30 am – 6 pm
Freud Museum London
20 Maresfield Gardens, London, NW3 5SX

Image courtesy of Art Camping Workshop, organized by Le Pont Organization, Aleppo.

The Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis is proud to bring together artists and professionals from Syria and the UK for the one-day conference Rebuilding Aleppo: Memory, Loss and Creation at the Freud Museum in London.

The day aims to foster dialogue between artists, psychoanalysts, writers, and curators in order to reflect on how art can promote social unity and how it can help in the rebuilding of a city and its society after the destruction provoked by civil war. As Camille Germanos, the FAP’s Founder and Director, explains, ‘people who have lived in the middle of a civil war often fear gatherings and open public conversations, but art and music can be forms of creation that bring people together in a public space that is not charged with anxiety.’

Chaired by writer and curator Vicky Richardson, the event sees contributions by painter Ola Abdallah, photographer Issa Touma, sculptor and archaeologist Zahed Tajeddin, sculptors Richard Wentworth and Richard Deacon, and composer Gavin Bryars, as well as by renowned psychoanalysts Houria Abdelouahed and Darian Leader. Combining artistic, critical, and psychoanalytical perspectives, this conference is concerned with the themes of women, memory, loss, and creation, which are to be explored through an investigative approach, focusing particularly on the impact of art practices on human relations and social ideals.

Following the welcome note by Fedja Klikovac, the day’s programme is divided into four panels chaired by Vicky Richardson: ‘Art and Everyday’ (Issa Touma and Richard Wentworth); ‘The Woman, the Other, Art and Psychoanalysis’ (Houria Abdelouahed and Ola Abdallah); ‘Art, Loss and Creation’ (Zahed Tajeddin and Gavin Bryars); and ‘Art and Reconstruction’ (Richard Deacon) with closing remarks by Darian Leader.

Rebuilding Aleppo, Freud Museum, 7 June 2018, audio, 51:36.

Ola Abdallah is an artist and writer of Syrian origin. After spending her childhood in Paris, Abdallah moved back to Syria where she completed her studies at the Fine Arts Faculty of Damascus in 2000. Relocating to Paris in the following year, she studied Art Theory at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Paris 8, earning, in 2008, a PhD with her thesis on French artist Aurélie Nemours. Abdallah’s painting and theoretical practices are heavily influenced by her Syrian beginnings, with a particular focus on abstraction, colour, and space. She lives and works in Paris.

Houria Abdelouahed is a psychoanalyst, lecturer, and translator. Abdelouahed is the co-author of Prophecy and Power and Violence and Islam, two books of interviews with the renowned Syrian poet Adonis. Abdelouahed has also translated Adonis’ great work Al Kitâbin to French and is the author of Figures du féminin en Islam, published by Presses Universitaires de France in 2012.

Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. Bryars has worked across a variety of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism. His first major works as a composer were The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971). Since then, he has composed prolifically for the theatre and dance as well as for the concert hall and has written three full-length operas. Among Bryars’ other works are three string quartets and a great deal of chamber music, much of it for his own ensemble. He was Associate Research Fellow at Dartington College of Arts from 2004–2008. Bryars has an honorary doctorate from the University of Plymouth and was awarded a Fellowship of Bath Spa University.

Richard Deacon is an internationally renowned British sculptor. His signature abstract forms, rendered through an impressive variety of materials, have placed him at the forefront of British sculpture since the 1980s. The artist represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Deacon was the recipient of the Turner Prize in 1987, the Robert Jakobsen Prize in 1995 and the Ernst Vogelmann Prize in 2017. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the Ministry of Culture, France in 1996 and made a CBE in 1999.

Fedja Klikovac is a curator and art advisor. Having lived in London since 1992, Klikovac worked for various art galleries. In 2002, he established the pioneering medievalmodern gallery in Marylebone, where he curated a series of exhibitions that saw contemporary artists work with medieval artifacts. He is currently the Director of Handel Street Projects, a gallery dedicated to promoting new British and international contemporary art.

Darian Leader is a British psychoanalyst. Leader is President of the College of Psychoanalysts, a Trustee of the Freud Museum, and Honorary Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis at Roehampton University. In 2015, he received the Mercier Chair at the University of Louvain for his work in psychoanalysis. He is the author of several books on psychoanalysis, including Introducing Lacan and Freud's Footnotes. His most recent book, Why Can’t We Sleep?, was published in 2019 by Penguin.

Vicky Richardson is a writer, curator, and educator. She is a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art and the founder of Inter, a platform dedicated to investigating new forms of internationalism in Architecture and Design. From 2010 to 2016, she was Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council and Commissioner of the British Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale. Richardson’s work on architecture, design and cities is widely published.

Zahed Tajeddin is an artist and archaeologist. Born in Aleppo, Syria, and having worked on many archaeological digs in the Middle East, Tajeddinhas a special interest in history and ancient art. His sculptures, often executed in clay, are influenced by ancient artefacts, archaeology, and mythology. They have been exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. Tajjedin is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Media, Arts and Design at Westminster University, in London.

Issa Touma is a self-taught photographer and curator based in Aleppo. In 1992 he founded the Black and White Gallery, the first dedicated to photography in the Middle East. Following the closure of the gallery four years later, Touma established the independent organisation Le Pont, which promoted freedom of expression through international events. Shortly after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Le Pont inaugurated Art Camping, an artists’ collective of Syrian refugees and citizen of Aleppo. Touma’s work is held in several international collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum’s in London.

Richard Wentworth is a British artist, curator, and teacher. He has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the 1970s. Wentworth’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions in major contemporary art institutions around the world, including Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, Paris, in 2017; Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2010; 52nd Venice Biennale, in 2009; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1994; and Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1993. He was awarded an OBE in 2011.