Pamela Chrabieh
Duwawa 5
Phygital Art (Sketch on Paper and Digital Art), 2019.
Duwawa 5
Phygital Art (Sketch on Paper and Digital Art), 2019.
STATEMENT
The two selected artworks are part of my 2019 Duwama Collection of phygital artworks that were exhibited at the Anima Mundi Festival – Visions by Itsliquid International Art Festival (Venice Biennale), Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi, Venice-Italy. War disconnects lives, memories, and experiences by creating endless cycles of violence, murderous identities, and wounded memories. I believe these memories are inevitably transmitted from generation to generation in private and public spaces and that socio-political conviviality and peace need both individual and national healing processes. Or else, the load of traumas that we carry will prevail, fueled by the continuous local and regional crises and State-sponsored amnesia. Contrary to war, peace is the art of connecting. It is a continuous process encompassing historical subjectivities and energies in interpenetrative modes, a process of interacting dynamics, fragmented and collective truths, voices, paths, and pathos.
A Duwama (spiral or vortex) is a visualization of this peacebuilding process. It symbolizes light versus darkness, life versus death, the positive movement toward manifesting connections, and, therefore, forgiveness, healing, and conviviality. Every one of my Duwamas is a story of transformation, from a shattered and disconnected situation, event, emotion, or experience, to a connected realm.