Tammam Azzam Works | Bio | Press | Exhibition Views
Syrian, b. 1980
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
One of the most prominent Syrian contemporary artists, Tammam Azzam is known for creating powerful and poetic works that chronicle the current state of his homeland. Already a successful painter in Damascus, Azzam relocated to Dubai, and later Germany, following the outbreak of violence in Syria in 2011.
Since 2013, Azzam has developed a dynamic practice that includes painting, installation, and digital and paper collage. The artist’s depictions of Syria’s broken surfaces are a meditation on rebuilding a lost home and destroyed reality through imagery. As he pieces together fragments of Damascus from memory, Azzam delves into an exercise of remembering and reconstruction.
Azzam received his BFA from the University of Damascus in 2001. Recent solo exhibitions include Tammam Azzam at Kunstverein Iserlohn, Germany (2019) and Paper, City Museum of Odenburg, Germany (2018). In addition to group exhibitions at the Aga Khan Museum of Art, Toronto, CA; Busan Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Wallach Gallery at Columbia University, New York, NY; American University, Washington, D.C; and Middle East Institute, New York, NY, he has contributed to large-scale international exhibitions such as the Sanctuary (2017-2018) and Home Land Security (2016), both organized by the FOR-SITE Foundation, San Francisco, CA; Bienial del Sur, Caracas, Venezuela (2018); KINLIX Festival, Maribor, Slovenia (2018); Vancouver Biennale, where he was an artist-in-residence (2014); FotoFest Biennial, Houston, TX (2014); Dak’Art: Biennial of Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal (2014); and the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2013).
In 2016, Azzam received a fellowship placement with the prestigious Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst, Germany.