Stolen Past

Damascus-born artist Hrair Sarkissian works across various media, including photography, video, sculpture, and sound. His work explores how memory, history, and violence are inscribed in communities, and how absence can be made visible.
Stolen Past sheds light on the tragic history of the Raqqa Museum in northern Syria. Located on the bank of the Euphrates River, the museum once housed over 8,000 cultural artifacts, bearing witness to the rich cultural heritage of the region from prehistory to the Middle Ages. Its collection included Paleolithic tools, early pottery, painted ceramics, cuneiform tablets, and the famous medieval blue-glazed Raqqa-ware. However, during the Islamic State’s (IS) occupation from 2013 to 2017, the vast majority of the collection was destroyed or looted, with only 880 items remaining. Through the dedicated efforts of the local community, the museum has since been rebuilt, and approximately forty artifacts are now on display.
To render this lost history visible, Sarkissian recreated ninety missing artifacts as lithophanes, forty-eight of which are shown here. This technique, invented in the mid-nineteenth century, reveals a sculpted image only when lit from behind. Adopting this method, in Stolen Past, 3D-printed lithophane panels are installed within tombstone-like plinths, illuminated so that the artifacts reappear in ethereal black-and-white photographs. These serene, luminous images simultaneously evoke the scars of destruction and the resilience of local communities to rebuild, urging us to reflect on our collective responsibility to protect and preserve culture.