A WARM Foundation production, in partnership with the Prix Bayeux-Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents
Exhibition | WARM Festival 2025, Sarajevo
All it takes is a few words expressing your opinion next to your painting or photograph, and you’ll find yourself hunted, exiled, or threatened with assassination – and, at best, barred from working. For more than five decades, any ideas that ran counter to the ideology of the al-Assad regime were forbidden; this was a system founded on tyranny, dictatorship, violence, torture, and corruption.
From the very first moments of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Syrians chose to voice their dreams and demands in countless ways, including photography and the visual arts. Over the years of war, this gave rise to a singular environment for documentation, reportage, and expressio, but it cost dozens of photographers and activists their lives and forced hundreds into exile.
On December 8, 2024, the Assad regime fell, and Syria’s doors swung open once more, to foreign journalists and photographers, and to Syrians who’d been living abroad for decades.
This project brings together the work of Syrian photographers and visual artists who have now returned to their homeland, bringing back the stories, images, and visions that were silenced for fifty-four years under tyranny.
Presented as part of WARM Festival 2025, Our Paths to Damascus is a major collective exhibition that reflects WARM’s ongoing commitment to platforming critical voices, documenting conflict with integrity, and connecting frontline experiences across borders. The exhibition will be hosted at the European House for Culture and Minority in Sarajevo throughout the festival in July 2025.
Featured artists: Ammar Albiek, Albaraa Haddad, Anas Alkharboutli (homage), Fouad Hallak, Hussien Haddad, Guevara Namer, Alaa Hassan, Sameer Al-Doumy, Mosab Al-Nomire, Anas Ali.
Curated by Abdulmonam Eassa and Ghait Abdul Ahad.
Designed by Lamija Idrizbegović.
