American-born David Najib Kasir has strived to merge his warm feelings of identification with primarily his mother’s native Syria and also his Iraqi father’s past with the utterly disruptive and destructive realities of a region now suffering ongoing civil war.

Following the onset of the war in 2011, Kasir initiated a series of figure paintings showing exhausted refugees facing danger and uncertainty. To proclaim their dignity and distinctive heritage, he incorporates into his painting geometric designs from the decorative Arab mosaic-inlay tradition of zelliege. His anonymous, faceless figures display their culture even as they enter an unknown world, helped, as here, by the outstretched hands of strangers.