in 2011, there is no going Back. Ammar al-Beik has to leave his home in Damascus. To blatantly criticism of Assad’s Regime, which he practiced in his films. About Beirut and Dubai, he flees 2014 to Berlin. Eight months stay in a container camp for Refugees, then he can move into my own place in the Pankstraße. You apartment and Studio at the same time, tiny, but a space for him and his art. The Syrian homeland is now virtually unattainable. His little daughter grows up far away, in the case of his Ex-wife in Greece.

Ammar al-Beik saves in the work. The artist has already made a name, not only in the Middle East. His films are shown on international Festivals, in 2007 and 2011 at the Venice Biennale, and in 2015, at the Berlinale. His installations and collages are shown around the world, from the Museum of modern and contemporary art in Seoul, to the MoMa in New York and now also in the Haus am Waldsee, a place that presents the work of Berlin-based artists. There, al-Beiks show “One to free”, named after a word game from the time when his daughter learned to count in English.

Video 14.03.2019, 17:02 Uhr01:26 Min.Eight years of war in Syria

The exhibition brings together for the first Time in Germany in all facets of Ammar al-Beiks work. Photographs, collages, installations, and particularly experimental films – he has always found new ways of expression, no matter where he was. In 2011, he met in Beirut a disease-ridden Shoe shiners, and had to also develop in old age, money for his family. Be the fate of employees of al-Beik, so much so that he made it a work of art, a tribute.

“Boya Boya Boya”, named after one of Beirut’s well-known hit song about a poor Shoe Shiner. In the Haus am Waldsee, the Installation occupies an entire room. In the middle of the blue metal tubes of the box with the cleaning supplies: cloths, brushes,. Round the walls hang enlarged pictures of these items, nicely framed and behind glass. “Is it life, then it is art,” explains al-Beik on a tour through the exhibition. In his work, he holds a piece of reality and, at the same time as it mutates to art.

His art is in person

The 46-Year-old, an energetic man, stocky, not too big, looks with a closer look on social and political problems. He wants to get to the true core of things, this is reflected not only in his films, the critical force has increased with the start of the uprising against Assad. Nine of his films are on view in the exhibition at the Haus am Waldsee and, in part, on televisions, some on screens.

His first film work as a gentle compositions, therefore, as “in the light of written poetry,” as he calls it. “Light Harvest” (1997), for example: the worker of a mill against the light, the ballet of your feet, a NAP on a pile of flour bags. It is not just any mill, whose workers he films in “Light Harvest”, but the mill behind the house of his mother, in the al-Beik grew up. His art is always personal.

Ammar al-Beik retains his sense of Humor

In later films, he works with the camera, mobile phone, and assembles these scenes with clips he finds on YouTube, for example, by the siege of Syrian cities. All wild, associative, free. In the Fellini homage “La Dolce Siria” (2015), he shows the children of friends in Aleppo, playing with an old camera. About you: the Gebrause of Scud missiles, which can be seen on the noise. The subjective character runs through al-Beiks. In “The Sun’s Incubator” (2011) he combines footage of the birth of his daughter, with clips from a news broadcast that the injury of a 13-Year-old shows, who was tortured by the Regime to death. All the atrocities, Despite – life goes on.

Ammar al-Beik has led into exile in Berlin. Here is his most recent work, the Collage, “I’m here – here I am”. On the six-by-two metre large canvas, he brings together the stages of his escape. The sea can be seen, a small toy boat – traces of privation way. But also the Berlin bear and the figure of an animal heart. “Who has the heart of a bear, can not make the escape,” says al-Beik. In addition, almost absurd, the logo of a supermarket chain and the longest German word that has found the artist: beef labeling supervision task transfer law.

Ammar al-Beik retains his sense of Humor, and also found its way into his work. Just like the escape, the longing for his daughter, and the arrival in a new home. Even if you should just stay home on time.

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Eight years of war What will become of Assad’s Syria?

Christian Böhme

Up to 5. May, Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30, Tue–sun 11-18 clock