Zolfaqar shaarani

Visual artist

Zolfaqar Shaarani, born in Damascus in 1981, graduated from the Faculty of Art of Damascus University in 2013. And based in Berlin. His artistic project explores philosophy on the one hand, while another facet of his work is expressed through music and harmony, Shaarani being a talented Oud player as well as a painter working in oil, acrylic and mixed media. He tells the story of how, while still a boy, he drew a portrait of himself as a musician, which surprised his arts teacher at the time as he had always assumed he wanted to become a painter. As a matter of fact, he did eventually decide to study visual arts, but for him these two activities remain intimately intertwined, as evidenced in the musical, dynamic nature of his paintings. For Shaarani, music works as a font of inspiration; it is the source of his philosophy and it also defines the boundaries of his personal world. As for colour and motion, they are his means of expression as well as the concrete workspace in which emotions are conveyed. In Shaarani’s paintings sounds can be seen, and harmony can be found both in his music and in the movement and colours of his paintings. The third element underpinning his work is the importance of learning, knowledge and technique. Shaarani sees developing his knowledge as a continuous and endless process, hence the importance of experimentation in his work. These three aspects are key to the evolution of his art, which uses abstraction as a means of expression to chart the discovery of the self and the world around him in the vibrant mix of materials, colours and shapes that define his paintings.