From Trump To Assad: Syrian Artist Reimagines World Leaders As Vulnerable Refugees
Darpan News Desk IANS, 09 Jun, 2017 01:47 PM
A Syrian refugee artist has spent 19 months creating a series of paintings in his Brussels studio showing world leaders as displaced or disenfranchised people and is showcasing them in a Dubai gallery.
Abdalla Al Omari’s “The Vulnerability Series” includes paintings of US President Donald Trump as a bedraggled refugee with a sleeping child in his arms, Russian President Vladimir Putin as a beggar, as well as former British Prime Minister David Cameron and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“My aim somehow shifted from an expression of anger to a more vivid desire of disarming these figures, (to) picture them outside their positions of power”, Omari told Al Jazeera.
Omari started painting in Damascus shortly after the start of the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011. He fled and was granted asylum in Belgium.
Gallery visitor Sami Azraq said the portraits were a unique take on the refugee crisis.
“I think it’s an interesting way or it’s a nicer way to look at the problem rather than our usual news or social media or other outlets,” he said.
Three women dressed in burqas killed a man who had been accused of blasphemy in 2004 in a northeastern Pakistani town, police said on Thursday, the second brutal killing over alleged insults to Islam in a week.
A woman hurled racist abuse at passengers on a train in Ireland, telling one of them to "f*** off back to India" after he placed a bag on an empty seat.
An Indian-American CEO has been ordered to pay US$ 135,000 to her former domestic worker after a Labour Department investigation found she underpaid and mistreated her.
Prominent Indian-American hotelier Vikram Chatwal has been ordered to do five days of community service and barred from owning a pet for five years for trying to set two dogs on fire.
DETROIT — A Detroit-area doctor charged with performing genital mutilation on two 7-year-old girls denied the allegations through her lawyer Monday, insisting that she conducted a benign religious ritual for families of a Muslim sect.
The FBI on Tuesday added a 26-year-old Indian national on its top 10 "Most Wanted List", two years after he went missing after allegedly killing his wife inside the kitchen of a Dunkin Donuts restaurant in the US.
