Day 4
Each of these projects have come with their own unique breakthrough. Each project has opened my eyes to some new potential for devotional artwork. I created Stations of the Cross for Syria during Lent then started posting artwork on Facebook as I finished it. I uploaded the artworks to Flickr with a creative commons license and encouraged people to download the project and use it in their personal devotions or in their churches.
I was shocked by the reception the series received - a couple dozen churches in the U.S. and U.K. displayed the artwork during Holy Week that year. It was exhilarating to think that I had created artwork that helped people pray for our siblings in Syria, all at once, together and during the highest holy days of our faith. The idea of creating artwork that organized multiple congregations, all around the world, in prayer was very intriguing to me. And has inspired me to return to the Stations of the Cross again and again.
By the time I finished Stations of the Cross for Syria, I was starting to think about what the next year’s series would address. It was at this point that the Stations of the Cross became a year-round obsession rather than something that I just did during Lent.
Jesus Meets His Mother: May 6, 2011
On May 6, after noon prayers, demonstrations took place across Syria to protest the Assad regime, especially in the suburbs of Damascus and the cities of Homs, Hama, Baniyas, and in Syrian Kurdistan. Within hours of the protest, video and audio of Syrian security forces responding with lethal force appeared on social networking sites. About 7,000 protestors wearing funeral shrouds and carrying olive branches and flowers gathered in Baniyas and met the army peacefully. Thousands of Syrians attempted to march to Deraa, but security forces maintained the siege of city and would not allow them to enter with supplies for the residents.
One thing that working on these projects over years and years has taught me is just how interconnected we all are. Which means that our suffering and our healing are interconnected. Stations of the Cross for Syria opened up my thinking about the devotional aspects of future projects. And the people of Syria have remained in my heart and in my prayers.
Four years after I completed Stations of the Cross for Syria, I created two icons during the Battle of Aleppo. The piece on the right is titled Flight Out of Aleppo and was based on a photograph of a family fleeing the city. The piece on the left is titled The Massacre of the Innocents of Aleppo and was completed on the Feast of the Massacre of the Innocents in December 2016 during an intense bombing campaign that saw the end of the Battle of Aleppo. This was a decisive turning point in the conflict.
As I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post, there are stations in my 2020 series Stations of the Cross: Refugee Journeys that address the plight of Syrian civil war refugees.
The Sixth Station: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
Almost 6 million Syrians have been forced to flee their country since 2011. Almost 7 millions Syrians have been forced to leave their homes, but remain displaced within their own country. The majority of Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries like Turkey and Lebanon. More than half of these refugees are under the age of 18. Source: The UN Refugee Agency.
At some point, I made an unconscious decision to live with the Stations of the Cross, to make it the center of my artistic practice, and that has meant that the themes of these series have impacted other projects as well - like, for example, my series of contemporary icons which saw me responding to the Battle of Aleppo. As I continue to share artwork here over this Lenten season, you’ll see how interconnected much of my work has become the longer that I’ve been making Stations of the Cross artworks.