Travel ban uncertainty stymies Syrian artist's visa

Speaking by Skype from her studio in Syria, artist Buthayna Ali said the war in her homeland makes it impossible to do the large-scale installations that are her creative specialty. While fighting skirts Damascus, where she lives in relative safety, she said, "I feel every scream, every bomb" ravaging the country.

Now another war — this one in the federal courts over President Trump's order banning travelers from certain Muslim-majority countries, including Syria — is coming between Ali and a featured, in-person role encouraging young artists at a workshop from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday at Perry World House, a University of Pennsylvania center for global engagement.

Unable to attend because the travel ban blocked visa applications from the seven affected countries in the first week of February, when she tried to apply, and uncertain how to proceed, Ali will try to appear by Skype, or in a pre-recorded video, because daily power cuts due to the war make online communication unreliable.

Organizers say they added the video-linked forum to honor Ali's artistry even though she can't be present.

About a year ago, the Arab arts initiative Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, a Philadelphia nonprofit, invited Ali for a month-long residency as part of  "(Dis)Placed: Expressions of Identity in Transition," a project on the effect of displacement on both Middle Eastern immigrants and Philadelphians feeling the shove of gentrification. Begun last year, the 18-month project, which also will explore narratives about belonging to a place, is supported by a $180,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

Along with Lebanese poet Nazem El Sayed, Tunisian muralist eL Seed, and Syrian composer Kinan Abou-Afach, Ali was supposed to involve students and others in the creation of artworks on the displacement/placement theme. Two of the invitees are already in America. The third is based in Dubai, with French citizenship, and will be arriving soon.

Al-Bustan was founded in 2002 by the Lebanese-born architect Hazami Sayed, of West Philadelphia, to cultivate Arabic language and culture for the children of immigrants and others, and to counter anti-Arab sentiment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, said Sayed. It began as a summer youth camp that met in Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill, and expanded to include concerts and grant-funded educational programming in and out of schools.

Ali, 43, is on the faculty of the University of Damascus, where she teaches painting. She has exhibited across Europe. Her installation Y Why! — a series of large slingshots representing how Arab countries launch their people around the world as immigrants — was acquired by the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. She has lived in France and Canada and has been a frequent visitor to the United States. Under ordinary circumstances, she would seem a shoo-in for a U.S. visa.

But in February, she said, just days before the American Civil Liberties Union won a restraining order against the travel ban, the Syrian agency she used to expedite her visa was told by the U.S. embassy in Beirut that it was not accepting new applications from the affected countries. (Beirut is where Syrians process their applications because the United States closed its embassy in Syria in 2012.)

Ali stressed that she was invited for a residency in Philadelphia. But it didn't make a difference.

Asked about the matter this week, a State Department spokeswoman on Thursday said the department does not discuss individual cases. In a statement, however, it explained that the department had revoked visas and halted application interviews throughout the world on Jan. 27, the day of the president's order, and a week later, on Feb. 3, "resumed regular processing" to comply with a federal court, which blocked the ban.

Befuddled by the process, and fearing that there was another shoe to drop, Ali did nothing for about a month. More confusion ensued after Trump issued a revised travel ban, which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia eventually blocked, saying it "drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination."

As the date for the start of her planned monthlong residency approached, and with Ali running out of time to reapply for a visa, Sayed said she had no choice but to change the manner in which Ali would participate. Thursday's public forum and video conference are the first of Al-Bustan's creative ideas to keep Ali in the mix, said Sayed.

"We never thought it would become so complicated," she said. "The pity is we wanted her perspective to be shared here, in person, as someone who could change people's perceptions and stereotypes about Syrians."

As for Ali, she will miss seeing Philadelphia, she said, "miss the human contact that inspires" her ideas, and miss the chance to work on a writ-large scale that is foreclosed to her in Syria right now.