Damascus 15/02/2012 19:47:31

The title reproduces the digital timestamp attached to a photograph uploaded to Facebook during the Syrian revolution. The image showed a man lying on his side, his back covered in fresh wounds inflicted during a brutal police interrogation following his arrest at a peaceful demonstration in Damascus.

Barakeh removed the man and the surrounding scene, isolating the wounds as the only remaining visual information. Transferred into print, they appear as black gestural marks resembling brushstrokes. Their visual language sits uneasily between abstract painting and forensic evidence.

Withholding the injured man prevents his body from being exposed once again as an image of suffering. Attention shifts from the person carrying the wounds to the power that produced them. The perpetrator is never shown, yet the work constructs his portrait through the traces he left on another person’s skin.

The five large prints are installed one behind another, creating a physical as well as visual recession. Across the successive layers, the marks become increasingly faint until they disappear. The wounds recede from the viewer, echoing how evidence recedes and public attention fades. Yet their disappearance is never complete: the precise date, place, and time remain fixed in the title.