My work unites a variety of materials in careful compositions that I am proud of for their ability to narrate. About seven years ago I started my search for a completely new way of working. Until then I had always been busy making paintings on canvas or paper, with acrylic paint or watercolour paint. Since I could no longer afford expensive materials, I had to make do with the leftovers I had left. But I really wanted to make art and I wanted to find my own way to make this at all costs. I looked around for all kinds of pieces of paper, magazines, newspapers, pictures and other materials that I could still use. I remembered that as a young girl I loved to cut pictures from magazines to stick on books, a diary, and even my room door.

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This is how I work. I use original photos, all kinds of paper, acrylic paint, oil pastels, ink crayons and pencil in my artwork. The variety of resources that I can now use has proved indispensable to me. I wanted my works to be transparent and to have depth. That was the biggest challenge collage art presented to me, the relentless lack of transparency. Finding a way to simulate the effects of transparency that paint, especially watercolour paint, can have. That was my real achievement, I think. In my paintings and collages, I try to show the total of my creative work in it. Layer upon layer of different materials and all kinds of techniques, all of which leave visible traces in the finished pieces.

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The creative goal of my work is to "make something beautiful out of decay." My tableaus explore the dissonance between old and new materials, intertwined in the most beautiful way to create dreamy and melancholic images.

 

Children inspire me. Their ability to transcend a certain rotten situation is astonishing. Play tag in the ruins of a bombed-out Syrian city. Playing football in the most miserable neighbourhoods. They are always looking for the light. They will save the future that has really messed up our generations, and not even blame us for it. If we could just keep the child inside ourselves a little bit more, we wouldn't be in such a mess. Art can help us to regain our childhood innocence.