Biography

Tammam Azzam

Syria

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Collage, Printmaking

Tammam Azzam

Born in 1980, Damascus, Syria
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Tammam Azzam graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus with a concentration in Oil Painting and subsequently obtained a Fine Arts Certificate in 2001 from Darat al Funun’s Al Kharif Academy, an esteemed artist workshop series led by Syrian master, Marwan Kassab Bashi. Since joining the Shabab Ayyam Young Artists Programme in 2008, he has been featured in several significant events including the group show, ‘Stories from the Levant’, Scope Art Fair, Basel, in 2009, and Art Miami 2010, and has held solo exhibitions at
Ayyam Gallery, Damascus in 2010 and Dubai in 2011 and 2012. 


Upon losing his studio in Damascus and needing new ways to express himself and his sadness with the events that were unfolding in his homeland of Syria, Azzam began working with digital art. In his solo exhibition held in November 2012 in Ayyam Gallery Dubai (Al Quoz), digital artworks representing a location the Syrian Uprising has affected were overlaid with the text, ‘In the revolution’, followed by the name of the area that witnessed the revolution. Other examples took the form of fractured and wounded maps of my country, stop signs covered with bullet holes, bleeding apples, fallen chess pawns and puzzle pieces, and symbols of peace reconfigured into targets, all symbolizing the violence the Syrians are facing.

Solo exhibitions:

2019. Tammam Azzam, Kunstverein Iserlohn “Villa Wessel”, Iserlohn, Germany
2019. Tammam Azzam, 2007 / 2017: New Retrospective, Ayyam Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2018. Tammam Azzam, Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, Germany
2017. Paper, City Museum of Oldenburg, Germany
2016. The Road, Ayyam Gallery - 11 Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE
2013. I, The Syrian. Ayyam Gallery, London, UK, I, The Syrian, Ayyam Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2012. Syria, Ayyam Gallery, Al Quoz, Dubai, UAE / Curator : Safwan Dahoul
2011-12 Dirty Laundry, Ayyam Gallery, DIFC, Dubai, UAE
2010 Metallica, Ayyam Gallery, Damascus, Syria
2006 Tammam Azzam, Centre Culturel Français, Damascus, Syria
2004 Tammam Azzam, Atassi Gallery, Damascus, Syria
2001 Aquarails, Institut Français du Proche-Orient, Damascus, Syria

Group exhibitions:

2019 où est la maison de mon ami ?, Group exhibition of contemporary Syrian artists, maison des arts, centre d’art contemporain de malakoff, Malakoff, France
2019 Art in spite of (t) exclusion, curated by Andreas Pitz, Diakonie Deutschland, Braunscheweig, Germany
2019 Farbenspiele, Ministry of Finance Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
2019 Tribe: Contemporary Photography from the Arab World, curated by Janet Bellotto and Dr. Woodman Taylor, American University, Washington, D.C., USA 
2019 Uprooted, World Bank Group, Washington, D.C. USA 2017 Sanctuary, For-Site Foundation, San Francisco, USA 
2018 Pueblos en Resistencia, Bienal Del Sur, Caracas, Valencia
2018 Shelters of Babylon, KINLIX Festival 2017 Maribor, Slovenia
2017 The Armory Show, with Haines Gallery, San Francisco, New York, USA 
2017 Away from Home, Künstlerforum Bonn, Bonn, Germany
2017 Sanctuary, For-Site Foundation, San Francisco, USA 
2017 On Target, Europea Capital of Cultura-Pafos 2017, Pafos, Cyprus

Permanent Collections:

The Samawi Collection

Art Fairs:

2010. Miami International Art Fair
2009. Scope Basel, June
2009. Palm Beach International Art Fair, January
2008. Art Paris Abu Dhabi, November