Hamid Sulaiman

Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian refugee currently based in Paris. He was heavily involved in the Arab spring and spent time in prison, but managed to escape to Egypt before making his way to France. Freedom Hospital was published in France to wide acclaim. Hamid has exhibited his art in London where he was interviewed by the Guardian: “The brutal crackdown on Assad's opponents dominates the paintings of Hamid Sulaiman, from the town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border, who fled abroad in 2011 after being arrested several times for taking part in peaceful protests. On one canvas, Light after Dark (2012), abstract flesh-colored bodies huddle shackled and blindfolded in a basement corridor of the security police headquarters in Damascus, where the artist was once imprisoned. Now living in Paris, Sulaiman said the single shaft of light that illuminates the scene symbolizes the desperate hope prisoners cling to. ‘Hope of the light after of all this darkness is the thing that keeps you sane. I was not tortured but I saw people getting tortured and I heard their screams. I lost many friends under torture including my best friend, and I can feel their hope of the light even one moment before they died.’” After the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, a photo of him and his girlfriend kissing under a sign saying, “Love always wins,” went viral. Francesca Barrie is a translator from French and Italien. She studies at Oxford University and went on to complete an MA in French at University College London. Barrie was shortlisted for the Institut Francis's Young Translator of the Year prize. Her translation of Tiphaine Riviere's Notes on a Thesis, published in 2016, received rave reviews.