HOMS

Homs, a city in western Syria, was a major industrial centre. With a population of at least 652,609 people in 2004, it was the third largest city in the country. It was also the "capital of the revolution" after residents embraced the call to overthrow the president in early 2011 and much of the city fell under the control of the opposition.

By the time of this work in 2016, large parts of Homs had been destroyed during the Syrian war.

HOMS, is a mixed-media installation where drone footage of the ruins of Homs, which I digitally slowed down, is projected on a wall. Before the wall there is a metallic head that reflects these images creating ever-changing beautiful patterns in the room: a beautiful spectacle made from the ruins.

Western representations of Syria move between fascination with a distant place, war consumed as entertainment, and responses to the increasing numbers of refugees.

This duality is metaphorically expressed in the beautiful caustics that the reflections in the head create. There is beauty in the representation, yet, it is not related to the horrors that the footage shows.

The video is a twenty-times slowed down version of drone footage captured by Russian news agency Russia Today. The sound was composed specifically for the piece.