Amman, Deep Down
Over the last decade, many Amman-based artists left their art practices and the burgeoning local art scene and moved to the UAE in pursuit of opportunity or change. Adjusting to a new pace of life, the broad mixture of cultures and perspectives, the languor of the urban landscape -- these are shared experiences that bind us together.
Upon returning to Amman for a visit, we are welcomed by that familiar smell of dust and pollution, streets lined by jasmine, the sound of the gas trucks and car horns and the call to prayer; simple things that anchor us once again to familiar feelings of home. Once you’ve left Amman, it feels gone, far removed from you, but then you’re back and it’s as if no time at all has passed, and everything is the same as you left it. Sitting at the kitchen table, listening to parents complaints about this or that, a cup of Turkish coffee and freshly cut fruit after lunch, a neighborly drop-in, a curse and a honk at the next driver cutting in our way, the wry humour, its raw sadness...
This Amman-themed edition of Daftar Asfar was handbound and handmade using paper and natural dyes produced in Iraq Al Amir, a rural area just outside of Amman, where a women’s co-op has been successfully supporting its community through the preservation and innovation of traditional crafts.
We asked 6 artists living and working in the UAE diaspora to illustrate and express the subtle and transitory feelings of yearning for Amman and a sense of home, from their new homes and studios in the UAE.