This is what happens when you put Andy Warhol in Syria

I walk along the seafront of Beirut’s Corniche towards the Ayyam Gallery in Beirut tower. The soaring battle-ruined shell of the Holiday Inn looks down on me as I make my way along St Georges Bay. The signs of Beirut’s own turbulent past are plain to see. Curtains of the St George Hotel blow in the wind through shattered windows on my left; an empty remnant of Beirut’s civil war and bearing more recent blast marks from the explosion of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005.

Crossing into Beirut Tower, the Ayyam Gallery shows the fresh scars of Syria’s war through the eyes of Syrian artist Tammam Azzam. His artworks have already gone global with his Syrian Museum compositions depicting classic art merged with images of today’s violent dismantling of Syria.

Klimt’s famous The Kiss shares its timeless textures with a bullet ridden building in Syria’s Douma. Louay Kayali’s classic work depicting the pain of refugee life while Andy Warhol’sElvis with a gun stands among chewed up metal and the bombed out concrete of a Syrian street.

Tammam’s I, Syrian collection spread across the walls of the Ayyam Gallery show Syrian life punctuated with glimpses of hardship. It addresses the pain of being a Syrian, watching the crumbling of your homeland from the outside. Tammam has lifted this pain onto the canvas, creating works damning the world’s apathy and the spectre Syria has become for most.

His works shove loss in your face with meticulous detail and striking focus. One work in the exhibit Syria Next Spring shows a hand grenade with flowers in vivid colour blooming from its casing. It gives a sense of hope and life. Another work shows a destroyed Syrian building floating over the United Nations in Geneva. Balloons fly in the air as the ground opens up in front of the supposed home of international peace and humanitarian relief.

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This is what happens when you put Andy Warhol in Syria (PHOTOS)