Hanibal Srouji

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Hanibal Srouji

1957 - Beirut, Lebanon

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Hanibal Srouji is a Lebanese painter. He graduated in 1987 from Concordia University, Montreal, and he lived in Canada and France before returning to his country.

Srouji’s art deals with his nostalgia for Lebanon, as he emigrated at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. At the beginning of the war, Srouji served as Red Cross volunteer in Southern Lebanon, an experience he later compared to horror movies.

He ultimately escaped from Sidon by boat to Cyprus before emigrating to Canada. Shortly after the end of the war, Srouji traveled back to Lebanon to try to pick up the pieces.

Srouji is considered as an abstract painter, becoming recognised for using a blow-torch to create small holes and lines. His paintings remind one of bullet-marked walls of crippled buildings in Beirut and encompass the human emotions in the aftermath of the civil war. Another series has been dominated by vertical lines that represent the bars of a cage, as signs of confinement, but can also be read as bars of a musical composition.

He currently teaches at the Lebanese American University.