Lovers #3 by Tayseer Barakat

Tayseer Barakat‘s body of work ‘Shoreless Sea’ manifests as a witness account on the refugees’ mayhem journeys through the Mediterranean Sea. A subject of a strong relevance to the artist’s life; Barakat is a refugee himself who lived a good part of his life as a child by the Mediterranean shores of Gaza and as a university student by the Mediterranean shores of Alexandria.

Nonetheless, this same sea that he grew to love, has transformed in recent years to become a beast that swallows fellow refugees in their desperate trips in search for new decent lives in Europe. In his paintings, the sea appears as if it has withdrawn its shores and hid them away, leaving flights of refugees to their gloomy fate. His artworks depict a constantly wavy monster, which seems as if breathing heavily from beneath the boats through the lungs of hundreds of refugees who lost their lives under the water in their journeys to “shoreless” Europe.