Arabs in a pickle jar

To make pickles, you need to tightly pack cucumbers into a jar, pour in vinegar, add salt and wait for the acid to sink in. Syrian artist Houmam Al Sayed believes Arabs are now being crushed like those cucumbers and the final outcome will taste like nothing but bitterness. That’s the theme he explores in “Pickles”, his current solo exhibition at Beirut’s Mark Hachem Gallery. Over several large canvases with deformed characters, from shorter legs — representing the inability to move — to shorter arms — symbolizing ineptitude to put them to good use, 33 year old Houmam portrays the handicapped Arab. On one of the largest canvases, the figures have a belt wrapped around their hands, legs or mouth, symbolizing the government hindering people from seeing or speaking freely. “In Syria, we have been wrapped like that for over 50 years,” he says. Another canvas depicts military boots on the