Syrian refugee Muthanna Al-Haj, who was displaced from his hometown in Dara’a 5 years ago, chose not to give up despite the difficult circumstances he has been going through since he escaped the brutality of the Assad regime and moved to Jordan. Al-Haj sought ardently to sharpen his talent and pursue his old dream of learning how to paint. Using his paintbrushes and canvases, Haj tried to embody the Syrian tragedy and the Syrian revolution.
Al-Haj said that painting is a means of conveying the Syrian people’s pain in a language that all peoples around the world understand. To him, paintings that truly reflect the reality in Syria greatly contribute to thwart attempts by foreign governments to distort the facts and convey a distorted image of what is going on in Syria to their people.
Al-Haj hopes to convey a message to the whole world that the Syrian people love peace and that they hate war which has been imposed on them by the regime and its allies. He said that all he wanted was to travel to Europe to develop his painting skills.
Al-Haj spends most of his time in his small studio in his house, delving deeply into his distressed memory to extract paintings that have deep intensity and meaning reflecting the pain and suffering of most Syrians.
Al-Haj participated in three art exhibitions in Jordan, armed with hope and trying to convey the suffering of the Syrian people to the outside world.
Al-Haj had to leave his hometown of Khirbet Ghazala in Dara’a province to Jordan in 2012 for fear of the arbitrary arrests, killings, and destruction by the Assad regime against the Syrian people. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Al Jazeera)
