In his Hamra studio, the memory of Baghdad intersects with the anxiety of Beirut. Baran continues to paint what does not end with wars, and what does not arrive with the promised “relief” of ceasefires. He paints what remains after military vehicles fade from news bulletins: the human after war has passed through them, altering their walk, gaze, features, and silence. He paints the waiting displaced person. His work is less about the past than it may seem; at its core, it is a warning from a present that continues to produce the same bodies, accumulate them, and send them into the unknown—a present that generates the same faces and plants the same fear in their features, across many countries under different names.
