When the savagery of war became startlingly clear, Omran Younis began including the horrible reality around him in his work. He explains: "When art becomes a protest … In this human slaughterhouse, a protest against the pain, the invisible, the human moment of fear and death that develops into screams on this white cloth until it becomes painful and the black painted lines penetrate the body of the earth like a plough to make art a clear line of certainty… Its price is only life itself."
Born in Hassakah, Omran Younis (1971) received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus University.
With an intensity characteristic of his work, Younis clearly expresses Syrian suffering. Filled with horrific scenes of corpses and coffins, dismemberment, fear and panic, his work traces the symbols and the inhumanity of the war in a way that evokes heart wrenching emotions. Grisly details are rendered with charcoal over layers of acrylic paint in a strong reaction and social commentary to the world around him.
Having been featured in exhibitions throughout the Middle East and in the US, Younis has received critical acclaim at home and abroad holding solo exhibitions at art spaces such as Ayyam Gallery, Beirut and Zara Gallery, Amman. He was featured at the Virginia University Gallery in Doha alongside such prominent Arab artists as Dia Azzawi, Mona Hatoum and Youssef Nabil. His work is housed in collections across the Arab world.