Hanibal Srouji

Hanibal Srouji (born 1957 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a Lebanese painter. He graduated in 1987 from Concordia University, Montreal. He lived in Canada and France before returning in his country. Srouji developed a technique of burning holes in his paintings after having participated to numerous workshops in America and Europe, including the Triangle Arts Trust. He currently teaches at the Lebanese American University.

Srouji’s art deals with his nostalgia for Lebanon, as he emigrated at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. At the beginning of the war, Srouji served as Red Cross volunteer in Southern Lebanon, an experience he later compared to horror movies. He ultimately escaped from Sidon by boat to Cyprus before emigrating to Canada. Shortly after the end of the war, Srouji traveled back to Lebanon to try to pick up the pieces.

Hanibal Srouji became known for using a blow-torch to create small hales and lines. His paintings remind bullet-marked walls of crippled buildings in Beirut and encompass the human emotions in the aftermath of the civil war. Another series have been dominated by vertical lines that represent the bars of a cage, as signs of confinement, but also be read as bars of a musical composition.

Although Srouji is considered as an abstract painter, his recent work, Terre/Mer ("land/sea"), evoked landscapes.

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