In Ahmad Tallaa’s paintings, the face is always present — but never completely clear. His portraits are slightly blurry and softened. You can definitely recognise a face, but not always its exact features. And perhaps that is the point: Tallaa is not interested in painting someone’s likeness. He is interested in what a face can carry.

“The face is not there just to depict someone,” he says. “It is a way to reflect what is within.”

For Tallaa, art began early. He grew up in an artistic family: his father is a calligrapher and musician, and other members of his family were also connected to art. Drawing was part of his childhood. But the language he works with today came later, shaped by a much more difficult reality.

Tallaa is from Damascus, and his practice was shaped in the context of war. Surrounded by stress, noise, and instability, he needed a place to balance himself internally. Art became, in his words, a kind of self-treatment.

He says. “Art became the language through which I developed and articulated my visual practice, where each artwork emerges as a unique jargon through convergence of shape, composition, form, line, and texture, with every element contributing to the work as a unified whole.”

That language is still visible in his work: rough textures, expressive lines, muted tones, floating figures, open compositions. His paintings do not try to explain everything. They leave space for the viewer to enter, pause, and feel.

Tallaa often speaks about witnessing in the sense of responsibility. For him, what people go through — especially in times of violence, pressure, and uncertainty — should not disappear. It becomes an archive.

“We are not simply victims,” he says. “But witnesses entrusted with the responsibility of preserving what we have seen. These experiences carry an essential value and deserve to be documented as LIVING ARCHIVE.”

This idea is central to his upcoming solo exhibition, The Living Archive, held at Firetti Contemporary. The title suggests something active, something that does not simply belong to the past. For Tallaa, an archive is not only made of documents or objects. It is also visible in the body, in the face, in the way a person changes over time.

“Whatever you go through shows on your face,” he says. “The source of it is within the archive — what you have been through.”

This is why his portraits feel slightly blurred. They are not unclear because something is missing. They are blurred because there is something behind them — something not immediately visible, but still present. A clear image can be understood quickly. But Tallaa wants the viewer to stay longer.

“When the viewer is given a form with a fixed meaning, the viewer sees it and moves on,” he says. “Ambiguity, by contrast, creates a space for contemplation, inviting the gaze to examine, linger and reflect.”

His works are full of this tension between what is seen and what is felt. Last year, in the group exhibition The Unseen Presence, this idea became especially important. Tallaa’s portraits are not about a specific person, but about an invisible emotional state. The face becomes a tool for expressing what cannot be directly shown.

But Tallaa’s practice is not limited to portraits. In The Living Archive, we see how the same language moves into other forms — handmade books, recycled surfaces, and sculptural works.

For him, these are not separate directions, but parts of one continuous project. He often works with old or reused materials — paper, wood, cloth, and other surfaces that already carry traces of time. A recycled surface, like a human face, holds something from its past. It becomes another kind of archive.

The handmade books continue this idea in a more intimate way. Each page can stand alone, but together they create a sequence: sometimes with contrast, sometimes with harmony. A page may contain a line, a hand, a face, or a fragment of writing. For Tallaa, the book becomes a space of freedom, where different compositions can exist inside one object.

His sculptures, including Sleeper and Traces of Light, bring the same search into three dimensions. The sleeping figures do not simply rest; they seem to be looking for shelter, trying to escape noise and find a quiet place. In this sense, they return to the beginning of Tallaa’s practice: art as a place of protection, balance, and internal calm.

P.S. I would also like to thank Ahmad’s friend, Yaarop, who made this conversation possible by seamlessly translating between Arabic and English.