4 - 5 September 2021
Register here for the tour on 4 september on 15.00h (maximum capacity of 15 people per tour)
EVENT | 4 and 5 Sept 2021 | Tropenmuseum
Register below (for free) for the tour. You will need a regular entree ticket for the museum (buy tickets here).
Saturday September 4, 15.00h | Tour of Fleeing the Dark with the artist Issam Kourbaj
Sunday September 5, 15.00h | Tour of Fleeing the Dark with the artist Issam Kourbaj
Register here for the tour on 5 september on 15.00h (maximum capacity of 15 people per tour)
Kourbaj’s exhibit is a memorial to the millions of his fellow Syrians who were displaced by the ongoing crisis, which has continued for ten years. The intervention grew from a series of conversations between his artistic practice and museum collections. His artworks are subtle and metaphorical, preferring to engage with the everyday human dimension of crisis. He often works with metaphors drawn from other disciplines, for example, dance, botany, or linguistics.
Issam Kourbaj comes from a background of fine art, architecture and theatre design. He was born in Sweida, Syria, and trained at the Institute of Fine Arts in Damascus, the Repin Institute of Fine Arts and Architecture in Leningrad (St Petersburg), Russia and at Wimbledon School of Art, London. Since 1990, he has lived and worked in Cambridge, where he has been artist-in-residence, a Bye-Fellow (2007–2011) and a lecturer in art, at Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge.
Since 2011, Kourbaj has been dedicated to raising awareness and money for projects and aid in Syria through several exhibitions, installations and performances in the UK and abroad. In December 2020, his installation Dark Water, Burning World (2017) was chosen as ‘The 101st Object’ for the British Museum and BBC Radio 4 programme A History of the World in 100 Objects.
Portrait by Mourad Kourbaj
