Back End: Genesis of Ruin
Archival work, Amsterdam, NL
2025
This body of work examines the hidden architectures that have framed Syria through a colonial and algorithmic gaze — the “back end” where meaning is constructed, indexed, and weaponized. Each painting takes its title from the raw captions of image searches, where violence is flattened into headlines, where loss becomes a keyword, and where a nation’s complexity is reduced to searchable fragments.
“Genesis of Ruin” points to this forced origin story — a creation myth authored by others, where Syria is made legible only through categories of devastation, exile, and war. By archiving and reanimating these fragments on canvas, the work resists erasure while exposing the coercive systems that dictate how histories are seen, named, and remembered.
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