An interview with artist Tammam Azzam, for the Burnet News Club.

1. Artist Tammam Azzam
speaks exclusively to
the Burnet News Club

2. About our interview with Tammam
In the Burnet News Club we believe it is really important
for everyone to be able to have their say about important
issues happening in the world around us.
We can have our say in lots of different ways – not just
by speaking or writing. For example, artists can make
powerful comments on important issues through their
paintings, and musicians can do it with their songs.
The artist Tammam Azzam creates artworks to express
his views about the Syrian conflict. In these slides you
will see some of his pictures, along with things he would
like to tell the Burnet News Club about each of them.

3. Tammam is an artist whose paintings and digital
artworks tell the story of his experiences living through
the Syrian conflict. He recently had some of his artwork
shown in Banksy’s Dismaland!
He is from Syria but moved to Dubai with his family
when the conflict began. It was a big change, moving to
Dubai. He didn’t have a studio space for big art
anymore so he turned his laptop into his studio and
created digital art instead. If he could, he would like to
move to his favourite city, London. He would wander
through museums, study and be surrounded by culture.
A lot of people call him a political Syrian artist but he
would rather be known just as an artist.
“Maybe people want to say “The Syrian artist” but I
prefer to say The Artist. People want always to say
something political about my art works but I prefer to
say something artistic about that because I’m not a
politician.”
In his interview for the Burnet News Club, he tells the
story of his family and friends, and all of the people
affected by the refugee crisis.
What questions would you like to ask
Tammam? He will be reading through your
comments, so do ask him your questions!
About Tammam

4. Like
Tammam made this artwork because he
doesn’t think that liking something on
social media makes a difference in real life.
People anywhere in the world can feel like
they are having an effect on an issue by
‘liking’ posts about it on social media, but
the likes don’t always make any difference
to that issue. For example, in the case of the
refugee crisis, likes on social media don’t
always have an impact on the refugees.
Tammam thinks that likes on social media
are actually more about us than the issue
itself. They’re to show what we care about,
rather than to do something about it. He
says:
“Because I’m sure everything we did on
social media doesn’t make sense in real
life. It’s like about us, about our opinion,
about our participation in this revolution.
But it doesn’t make sense for refugees. For
example, we can just help in supporting
them sometimes but it doesn’t make sense
that we can change their lives. They are
out of their homes, they are in the tents,
they are under the rain in the cold, so
everything we do - it’s nothing comparing
to the political situation.”

5. Next
Syrian
Spring
“It was a feeling of hope
at that time because it
was from 2012. It was in
the first six months of the
Syrian revolution. It was
totally peaceful and
nobody wanted to be sure
about that at that time. I
thought at this time Syria
would survive. The
regime used these kind of
weapons everywhere. It
was about being hopeful,
covering these bad things,
this grenade, this
weapon, with flowers.”

6. Walt Disney Syria
“It’s one of the oldest
pieces. So it was about
comparing things
happening in the world -
comparing to what’s
happening in Syria. There
is no Disney Land in
Syria, ever, but if there
was a Disney Land it
would look like that
because they bombed
everything, everything,
everything.”

7. Back to school
“Six million kids are out of school for
the third year now, and for the
future it’s a disaster. If there’s a
future. After ten, twelve years,
nobody will know what is going on
now.
I’m feeling now it’s a human right for
all the refugees just to escape Syria,
to go out of Syria, this miserable
place, just for their kids at least. To
Europe. Not to Lebanon because it’s
a disaster in the refugee camps in
Jordan or in the Lebanon, and
people have rights to live. So what
about the kids? Yeah they have the
rights to live. The right to go to
school. You can’t imagine that more
than 2000 schools in Syria have been
destroyed totally.”

8. Laundry series
“I walked around the street
every day at 7 o’clock in the
morning to my studio which
was about 2 Km away. I
collected bags and clothes
from everywhere and I felt like
clothes is with us in all our
trips and journeys so it’s like
our witness of where we are. It
talks about our memories so I
am gathering a thousand
stories in just one place.”

9. Why is storytelling an important skill?
One of the Burnet News Club skills is storytelling. This is the ability to keep
people’s attention and make them care about something by affecting their
feelings. We can tell stories using words, but we can also tell stories in other
ways, for example by drawing or painting or writing a song. These different
types of art are all ways to tell a story.
Tammam tells stories through his art. We asked Tammam why he thinks
storytelling is an important skill. He thinks that when we tell a story about
something that’s happened in real life – when we make art about it – we
can show what really matters about it.
We can show the important truth at the heart of the issue: the thing that
will affect people’s feelings. So he thinks art, stories, can show the real
nature of things. That’s why, to him, the artistic version of an event is
actually more real than the life we’re living in. He says:
“… because life generally is not easy, it’s a little bit tough. But when you
convert it to the artistic way it will look easier and beautiful. Like music.
Like drawing. Painting. Instillation. Cinema. For me it’s the real life. Not
the life we are living in. That’s why we should use art in every details.”