The artworks of Abdul Bashir Torun, a Syrian refugee artist who is in exile in Turkiye, were exhibited at Heyground Gallery, Seoul from June 20-27, 2023. Torun’s 21 artworks were brought to Korea in partnership with ThePromise and Help Syria, two locally established organizations, for the first time. The exhibition was hosted in consonance with World Refugee Day 2023, a day to celebrate and honor refugees everywhere, and in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The two organizations sought attention by exhibiting his artworks to raise public awareness.
Abdul Wahab Al Mohammed Agha, General Director, Help Syria.
Abdul Wahab Al Mohammad Agha, General Director for Help Syria, who has established a humanitarian organization based in Korea to help Syrians in their country, told the story to Pressenza Press Agency about how it started. “After the February 2023 earthquake in Turkiye, I did visit the affected areas to help Syrian refugees who have been very much affected by the disaster with ThePromise. I stayed for three months helping the people and we able to deliver basic life sustenance’s to Syrian refugees and local people. During that humanitarian endeavor, we met Abdul Bashir Torun, who has lived in Turkiye since 2016 with his family as a refugee. The artist is amazing that he has been volunteering in teaching refugee children art lessons at the Taiwan Reyhanli Centre, where the earthquake affected Syrian refugees get support”. The Centre is located in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Reyhanli, 2 kilometers away from the conflict, where the town has 100,000 Turkish residents and 250,000 Syrian refugees.
“Our organization is working for refugees outside of Korea, therefore, Among Torun’s artworks, we brought 21 original pieces to Korea for display and sale in order to help other people as he wishes. We have hosted two exhibitions before with Korean and Syrian artists together. This one is our third time hosting. It is because refugees are not only desperate people who are constantly in need of humanitarian assistance but with many skills and education, so our prime interest was also to raise public awareness in that regard.” Help Syria has built an elementary school in Syria to help students in their studies.
Kim Dong Hun, Managing Director, ThePromise International.
ThePromise International is a Korea-based development relief organization with the UN ECOSOC Special Status NGO. Kim Donghun, Managing Director, said that ThePromise was established in 2008 with the Buddhists’ great interest in assisting in humanitarian crises. ThePromise applies a new approach to support. Usually, when a crisis occurs before the outside assistance reaches, the first respondents are the nearby neighbors, the locals helping locals, who come quickly, so our support mostly focuses on empowering the first respondents. In this regard, we help the neighbors who are helping their neighbors.” The NGO has been assisting affected areas in Myanmar, Ukraine and Turkey as well as in Korea.
“From the Korean society’s perspective, when a crisis happens anywhere in the world, they want to help but it is like a wave, it fades away easily because one-time assistance doesn’t solve the problems, so to keep the public support consistent, we need to bring the attention every time. One of the ways is bringing different storytelling or through the works of art and hosting artistic events, such as this one, by the affected people. For such endowment, we have a center in Korea too.”
Yumin Lee, a visitor.
One of the visitors whom I met was Yumin Lee, a local staff at Save the Children Korea. She said that “I came here because it’s an art exhibition displayed during the World Refugee Day month, so I am interested in the issues and it was a great opportunity to me to see the artwork. When we think to imagine how the Syria crisis is as dark as it is that devastated the country, I thought maybe the artworks reflect that but I found out they are very colorful and beautiful. They are actually a beautiful version of Syria before the crisis happened and because of that, I am so impressed.”
Park, Ju Hyun, Exhibition Curator.
The exhibition’s curator, Park, Ju Hyun, said, “Basically, all his works depicted his memories of his homeland, Syria, and his wishes for peace. The artist’s personal story was touching in that because of the conflict in Syria, he has lost a number of his siblings. We divided the exhibition into three sections, Homs, My Hometown, The Women of Syria, and Arabian Horse in which different and imaginary stories have been told.”
Homs alleyⅠ(2018) and Watan(My homeland) (2019).
Horse I and Horse II 2020.
The confusion of the sea(2022).
For the introduction of the display, Ju Hyun wrote that Abdul Bashir Torun, who is also an artist talks about peace. Torun, from Syria, uses bold touches using a knife and lyrical colors to capture the narrative within the canvas. He’s expressing a strong crouching desire within him, with elements that capture a moment of fact. If you look at his paintings, you can see them as paintings of everyday life, such as the city and the face of a woman, flowers and people, and the jumping horse.
But Torun’s painting talks about basic peace for human life. Then, what was the title of this exhibition, “Memories of Torun?” It is certainly ‘Peace’. ‘But what kind of peace was the peace in those memories? If you ask, it probably wasn’t much different from the peace we’re thinking about today. Torun’s work contains empathy and a sharing of what is the ultimate aspect of peace in the past, present, and future.