ABSTRACT
As Syria and especially the destruction of its cities and historical sites became a subject of regular reporting in European media, exhibitions of “Syrian art” also began to proliferate. This chapter discusses the representation (and its lack) of Syrian artists on the international art scene in the new millennium. It begins with an outline of the situation during the 2000s and the growing interest in Middle Eastern contemporary art. The chapter also focuses on the increased international visibility of Syrian artists that went hand in hand with their large-scale displacement since the beginning of the uprising in 2011. The art critic Michele Cohen Hadria has written that those Arab artists who could be described as “young” during the 2000s and who were among the first to be noticed by the international art world, were better informed and theoretically equipped than previous generations of Arab artists.
