Youssef Abdelke

Place: Qamishli

Born: 1951

Biography:

Youssef Abdelké is born in Qamechli, north-east of Syria in 1951. At 15, he arrived with his family to Damascus. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus and graduated in 1976. In the late 1970s, he was a political prisoner for two years before being forced into exile. Moving to France, he graduated from the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and later from Paris XIII with a PhD in Fine Arts. In 2005, he was able to come back to Syria for a large exhibition and was arrested again for five weeks in 2013. Working in styles both gestural and realistic, Abdelke uses different techniques such as printmaking – engraving on copper or zinc plates – or drawing with pastels or charcoal on paper. In an acclaimed series, his still lifes of carefully placed objects are bound by ropes or associated together with skulls, knives, fish and other symbolic elements that infer the violence of war.