EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Unfinished Journeys is a solo exhibition of work, artist Helen Zughaib, has created over the last 10 years. This exhibition combines two of her painting series, Stories My Father Told Me and Syrian Migration Series, as well as five mixed media installations. 

Through the paintings in Zughaib’s Stories My Father Told Me, she vividly depicts real-life experiences, traditions, and folklore her father recounted to her of his life growing up in Syria and Lebanon. In pieces such as “Blind Charity,” Zughaib tells the story of morals used to teach generosity. In “Sanduk or Show Box,” she shows how children were entertained by puppet-like figures in a time before there were televisions and cinemas. Evident through the extensiveness of this series, these stories have had a long-lasting effect on Zughaib and they preserve important stories that would not be told otherwise. The focus and appreciation on this portion of her lineage, reinforces her empathy and understanding of the current crisis in Syria. 

The mixed media installations and Syrian Migration Series are a direct response to the “Arab Spring” protests that began in late 2010 and the subsequent Syrian Civil War.

“In 2010, I had my first trip back to the Middle East since having been evacuated from the civil war in Beirut, Lebanon in late 1975. I went to Lebanon, Syria (where my father was born in Damascus) and Jordan. A few months after I returned to the US, the "Arab Spring" began, initially bringing hope, optimism and potential for change in the Arab world. As the days, months and years dragged on, my work has also continued to try to visually record my feelings and emotions on the devolution of the “Arab Spring” and now the mass migrations that have resulted from the civil war in Syria. This war has displaced over 13 million people and resulted in over 500,000 thousand dead and counting.

Until now, my work continues to focus on the “Arab Spring,” and shedding light on its most vulnerable victims, the women and children, left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.” – Helen Zughaib, 2020

Influenced by Jacob Lawrence’s 1940-1941 Migration Series, the Syrian Migration Series takes viewers through the harrowing journeys of Syrians fleeing their homes. Zughaib draws parallels between the two separate series, horrible conditions in both, forcing people to find a better place to live. Twenty years after the completion of Lawrence’s Migration series, the African American Civil Rights Movement in America was in full effect. During that time, civil rights activists such as Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X were criticized for speaking out against the treatment of Blacks in America. Now in 2020, almost sixty years removed from the civil rights movement, we find similar sociopolitical issues being brought to the international stage. Issues such as domestic terrorism, hate crimes, over-policing, government desertion, and mass incarceration are still plaguing both Syrian and Black American communities.

By bringing attention to these atrocities, Zughaib is asking each of us not to forget about those that are struggling for home and safety. Her work urges us to appreciate what others have endured and to empathize with activists and the displaced, as they work towards a system of justice and hopefully peace.

Special thank you to curator, Dagmar Painter and The Jerusalem Fund for their tremendous help in making this collaboration possible.