⌊The grey room⌋
Models of coming to terms with the past
The places and spaces where I used to live or where I live today inspire me. My relationship with these places, spaces and things is a kind of interaction and inner dialogue. I feel them and communicate with them through my senses and my body. These spaces have their own odour, and the texture and echo of the walls can also be felt. When we leave them, they remain in our memory as mental spaces.
The place that I have irretrievably lost in my life is my family home in Saraqib. This loss motivated me to look at living spaces, furniture and objects that for various reasons were left behind by their inhabitants or no longer exist, possibly due to war or disasters. I began to recreate them as models made of paper and cardboard, which took me back to my childhood when I used to draw and make things with these materials. For me, the process of building these spaces is a re-creation and interaction with objects and events from the past. My work is based on exploring these spaces and analysing the different configurations of furniture and objects within by rearranging them in different contexts and then to document them photographically.
It is important to me to formulate questions about certain spaces or objects of everyday life in my work. When we look at these pictures, they perhaps encourage us to think about the meaning of the spaces shown and what they tell us about their inhabitants.
I use still life painting and its visual language in particular as inspiration for my work. The paintings of Giorgio Morandi, for example, have a great influence on my arrangements in terms of composition, colour, light and mood. Morandi's paintings give the impression of being viewed from a distance, with the edges and shadows of the objects appearing blurred and out of focus. His works have a visual language that conveys feelings of intimacy and nostalgia.
Sometimes I just focus on a single object standing alone in the room and photograph it. When I look at the picture, it opens up the possibility of imagining what other things might have been in the room before. We can see the object that is there and possibly also realise that other objects have been removed or no longer exist. The image can therefore give us an insight into both, the current state of the space and its past. It can show us how the space has changed over time and what traces past events have left behind.
For me, the result of the fusion of model and photography is ultimately like a painting. The image should not only create illusions or simulate reality, but, above all, invite the viewer to reflect. Each medium contributes in its own way to shaping our perception of reality. By bringing them together, we can gain a deeper understanding of how realities are formed.
About the artist
Maher Abdo was born in 1984 in the city of Idlib in Syria. He studied stage design at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Art in Damascus. After graduating, he became actively involved in the theatre industry and worked on productions of Syrian series and films. Maher has lived in Berlin since 2015, where he completed his Master's degree in Production Design at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf in 2023. In addition to his work as a production designer in the German film industry, Maher Abdo builds and photographs architectural models to artistically explore the relationships between sculpture, photography, architecture and film.