About
Hani Abbas – An Artist from the Camp, Drawing for the World
Hani Abbas was born in Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. In a narrow alley filled with longing, he grew up with a pencil in hand and a window in his heart that no one could close. The camp had only one gate, but the sky was wide open. And the sky was not just for light. It was for imagination, for hope, and for the wings of first drawings.
There, in a place where homes were pressed against each other as closely as hearts, and where stories were whispered and wept, Hani began to draw. The blank page was an entire world, and the first drawing was not a game. It was a way to understand life... a way to survive.
As a child, he won his first drawing prize from the United Nations. He heard his name called through the school’s loudspeaker, not knowing that this same prize would return to him 25 years later, this time as a member of its international jury.
He continued his studies at the Teachers’ Training Institute and the Faculty of Education at Damascus University and became a primary school teacher. But he never stopped drawing. In 1997, he held his first political cartoon exhibition at Damascus University, and began publishing in newspapers and magazines at a time when galleries were the only space to meet an audience.
He never adopted a fixed political stance. His allegiance was to people, to their dreams, their pain, their dignity. For him, caricature was not a weapon in the hand of power, but a mirror held by the oppressed.
When the Syrian revolution broke out in 2011, Hani stood by the people, and his pen became a cry for freedom. He began publishing bold works that supported the right to dignity, which led to him being pursued by Syrian intelligence. He had to move constantly and lived under siege and bombing in southern Damascus with his family.
During that period, drawing became an act of resistance, a form of silent prayer. He wasn’t drawing from afar, but from under the rubble, among broken windows and shattered streets, among lost friends and absent neighbors. He drew while shells fell, and while a child slept nearby. His art was raw and deeply human.
Many of those works became testimonies, documents of life under fire. He drew cracked walls, sleepless eyes, doorless alleys, and faces turned to ash. His work gained international recognition, and major newspapers wrote about him as one of the few visual voices drawing from inside the siege.
Among his most iconic works is The Soldier and the Rose. A soldier lowers his weapon before a flower growing from the ground. The image became a global symbol of art defeating violence, of silence confronting power. It wasn’t a naive metaphor, but a defiant truth.
In late 2012, Hani fled the siege. He hid and managed to reach Lebanon, beginning a new journey of exile. In a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, he rebuilt his memory with the remains of his drawings and kept drawing, spreading his truth across the world.
A year later, his work was exhibited at the RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) building, opening a path to Geneva, where he still lives and works today. There, he collaborated with several Swiss and
European newspapers, and began teaching art at the International School of Geneva.
In 2014, he was awarded the Cartooning for Courage Award by Cartooning for Peace, Free Cartoonists, the City of Geneva, and the United Nations. His work was exhibited on the shores of Lake Geneva, in an open-sky celebration of art and resistance.
Since then, Hani has led more than 500 workshops for students across Switzerland, from middle schools to universities, in collaboration with the Geneva Department of Education (DIP)
and Free cartoonists. Each workshop is a journey, where creativity meets memory, and pencils become voices.
He has also worked with international organizations such as the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UNHCR, placing his art in the service of justice and humanity.
Today, Hani Abbas continues to draw, to teach, and to believe. Art, for him, is not just expression, it’s survival, it’s identity, it’s hope. He believes that art can reshape the future, just as it once testified to civilizations past. And in every drawing, there’s still a red flower... resisting.
