Manaf Halbouni

Manaf Halbouni (* 1984 in Damascus ) is a Syrian- German artist .

Life

Halbouni is the son of a native of Dresden who comes from a family of doctors and art lovers. During his childhood, he and his older brother spent many summer months with their grandparents, who lived in the city. As a young architect, his father moved from Damascus to the region in the 1970s and did his doctorate there.

Halbouni graduated from high school in electrical engineering and studied sculpture at the University of Fine Arts in his hometown from 2005 to 2008. In 2008 he left Syria in order not to have to do military service there. Instead, he wanted to serve in the German Bundeswehr, which however refused him. From 2009 to 2014 he continued his sculpture studies at the University of Fine Arts Dresden with Eberhard Bosslet and has been a master student there since 2014.

Halbouni would like to return to Syria , but refrains from doing so due to the ongoing civil war there.

Works and exhibitions

Halbouni initially created a very large airplane out of scrap wood. In 2015, he dealt ironically with anti-Islamic statements by Pegida and the fear of refugees: he decorated the roof and the interior of an old Mercedes with mattresses, suitcases, a bicycle, carpets, a television, garden gnomes, cereal bars, books and a box brewed in Dresden Beer. He parked the vehicle on Dresden's Theaterplatz , bought a parking ticket for it and asked passers-by who were supposed to carry a sign with the words “Sachse auf der Flucht” to take a photo with the Mercedes. Although only 35 people were photographed, the action received a lot of media attention.

In 2015 Halbouni took part in the accompanying program of the Biennale di Venezia . He then had exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, where he showed one of his getaway cars. As part of his installation Monument , he had three buses set up vertically in Dresden to commemorate the war in Syria. In November 2017, the installation on the initiative of was Shermin Langhoff director of the Maxim Gorki Theater on the 18th of March Square in Berlin built.

In 2016 Halbouni received the Marion Ermer Prize .

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