A Broken HouseA Broken House

 Mohamad Hafez, a Syrian-American architect in the United States, is from Damascus, Syria. When he came to the U.S. to study architecture, he received a single-entry visa that would not allow him to return to the U.S. and was banned from traveling due to the September 11 attacks. Suffering from homesickness, he wanted to go back to Damascus but gave up returning upon his parents’ dissuasion supporting his dream. Instead, he decided to move his hometown to the U.S. He infinitely narrows the physical distance between Syria and the U.S. by creating miniature villages of his hometown that he remembers. After then, due to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, not only did his hometown become a place where he could no longer go back even if he wanted to, but also his family became refugees and dispersed among the world. So at this time, he is carving and painting buildings that were destroyed in air raids and building an image of the wreckage. The contradiction of creative activity breaks the boundaries between destruction and creation. For Hafez, it is a commemoration to mourn the vain deaths of his hometown and make up for the lost time. (KIM Kyung-tae) ​