Tous témoins. Prison drawings by Najah Albukaï Collective work. Edited by Farouk Mardam-Bey

17 × 24 cm 160 pages 40 color illustrations softback coedition pour que l’esprit vive/ actes sud march 2021 retail price: 15 €

Authors:

Habib Abdulrab Sarori Santiago Alba Rico Marijosé Alie Amadou Amal Djaïli Sinan Antoon Mohamed Berrada Jacques A. Bertrand Philippe Claudel Marie Desplechin Dominique Eddé Alaa El Aswany Timothée de Fombelle Laurent Gaudé Nancy Huston Souad Labbize Farouk Mardam-Bey Wajdi Mouawad James Noël Olivier Py Atiq Rahimi Alan Riding Sebastião Salgado Elias Sanbar Samar Yazbek

Dessins de prison de Najah Albukaï

ALL WITNESSES

Prison drawings by Najah Albukaï

Collective work. Edited by Farouk Mardam-Bey

In Spring 2021 at the Fait et Cause gallery in Paris, the Pour que l’esprit vive association exhibited works by the Syrian illustrator Najah Albukaï, inspired by the horrific torture he suffered and witnessed in Bachar Al-Assad’s prisons. Some of his drawings were published in the Libération newspaper, 12 August 2018, to a huge emotional response. To accompany the exhibition, more than 30 writers were invited to express their indignation in the face of the horrors perpetrated over the past ten years in Syria, a country that has become a metaphor for all that is wrong in the world: civilian massacres, torture in prison, human abattoirs, forced population displacement, civil war, religious fanaticism, violence to women, and planetary destruction - everything that inspires outrage and despair. This catalogue brings together Najah Albukaï’s drawings and the writer’s contributions. Some provide a direct emotional response to the artist’s images, others prefer to talk about their own very personal relationships to Syria. Some denounce the Syria-isation of our complicit and indifferent globalized world which despite the plethora of information available has let the country be destroyed, while others prefer to look at the more general theme of the violation of human rights and democratic freedoms.