Presidents at Work: Shop Displays of Political Portraiture in Prewar Damascus

Abstract

In Syria, official portraiture depicting members of the Asad regime has long been used as a tool to produce and uphold authoritarian power. Following in his father's footsteps, Bashar al‐Asad generated a wide range of billboards, banners, posters, and stickers in his own image meant for both public and private consumption. Rather than treat this visual regime as a monolith of interchangeable and mass‐produced imagery, I argue in this article for the examination of Asad portraits on smaller and more intimate scales. I discuss the display of these cult images within the domain of small‐scale shops in Damascus, looking at both how these images are embedded in other visual and symbolic contexts, and how they become individually relevant as they are materially embellished and marked.

Organising the Syrian revolution — student activism through Facebook

“…In her study on pre-war Damascus, Mcclellan (2013) The regime was saying that demonstrators were bought, that we went demonstrating not because we wanted change, but in exchange for a falafel and a soda. A falafel!…”

“…Juris and Razsa 2012;Juris 2012;Razsa and Kurnik 2012;;Mattoni 2013), as well as the growing literature on the Syrian revolution (eg . Harkin 2013;Ghrer 2013;Mcclellan 2013). Due to my focus on visuals and online practices I will also engage with discussions on representation and the power of images.…”