Against the Wall - Abdulkarim Majdal Albeik

In my previous works, my continuous effort was focused on painting the time and the effect it leaves; painting walls was my way to achieving this.”, Majdal Al-Beik says. I used to paint walls and the intervals and impacts caused by by time; such as the heat of the sun, the effect of the rain, writings set down in haste, children’s scribbles, funeral notices, quips of frustrated adolescence, and municipality postings. The wall served as a memory of the city and the neighborhood, a record for a particular phase.
Since the beginning of Arab revolutions and the continuous struggle in countries of the Arab spring between the people and the dictatorial regimes; a suffocating and painful general frame of mind has surfaced, especially in the countries that have witnessed a growing pace of killing and destruction

^{Pain, mixed media on canvas , 180 × 180 cm . 2012}.

I was influenced by this as many of my fellow artists in the region. An artist is the child of his environment and he witnesses the circumstances of his people by translating pain, fear, horror, and death. The Syrian revolution had a major impact on my paintings, finding myself to be under a reality that forced a tremendous change on my previous works, shifting them towards people’s catastrophes and suffering.

In my new works, I paint scarecrows that emerge from the heart of reality, representing sources of killing and destruction that have not been witnessed for decades. The continuous massacres, the barbaric and indiscriminate killings have forced new and violent vocabularies onto my work, scarecrows, crosses, knives, traps, bullets, and various weapons.
These vocabularies express the daily pain and tragedy afflicted cities suffer from, using various techniques and materials. A patched military cloth that brings fear and horror, holding a memory of pain and years of terror like a worn tattered military tent with no use of shelter or refuge but as one of the main sources of pain.
his cloth, or tent, that I stitch indicates the tearing of its body at times and blocking the immense terror emitted from it at other times. The blatant knifes and sharp blades foretell the verge of the abyss where the presence of knives

^{Trace , mixed media on canvas , 150 × 150 cm , 2012}.

overshadowed bodies with torture and gruesome spiteful murders. It is a crucifixion of the Syrian people on the lifeless body of human conscience.
My works are a scream in the face of hatred, fear, and killing, dismissive of them; an indicator of moral and humanitarian decay. As a result, my works came rough, filled with a tremendous amount of distress, sorrow, and combustion. And from drought and combustion comes a simple translation of Syria’s daily suffering.

^{Syria, The Fires, 240 X 570 . Mixed Media on Canvas}

^{The Trape 2, 180 x 180 cm, Mixed Media on Canvas}

^{The Trape 1, 180 x 180 cm, Mixed Media on Canvas}

^{Pain,180 X 180 cm. Mixed Media on Canvas}