Azza Abo Rabieh is a Syrian multidisciplinary artist whose works have long explored themes of fragility, resistance, and memory. While trained as a printmaker, her practice has gradually incorporated new materials and methods such as thread, fabric, and layering, as part of an evolving visual language grounded in memory, resistance, and personal narrative.

Abo Rabieh was detained in a Syrian prison, an experience that marked her profoundly and introduced new tactile and conceptual dimensions into her work. In that confined and oppressive space, she began pulling the threads of her prison blanket, a quiet and repetitive gesture. This act, rooted in necessity and survival, became the foundation for a technique that uses thread to draw and multi-colored tulle to “paint” without relying on traditional pigments. The material becomes the medium, and transparency becomes a form of expression.

The artist reflects:

سحبتُ خيطًا من البطانية في تلك الغرفة المعتمة، في المعتقل.
 لم أستطع النظر من خلال الشبك المعتم إلى ذلك العالم الملوّن؛ تلك النافذة القذرة.
 دون أن أشعر، بدأت حكايتي ومشواري من تلك المواد التي عاشت معي.
 ولم أجد طريقة أصدق لخلق حوار مع العمل الفني.

بالخيط أرسم، بقماش التول الشفاف المتعدد الألوان أُلوّن، دون استخدام أي مواد ملوِّنة أو أصباغ.
 على عكس ذلك الظل المعتم… إنه ظل ملوّن،
 أخذني إلى حياة هشّة من فرط حساسيتها، وعميقة في طرحها.

 I pulled a thread from the blanket in that dim room, in the detention center.
 I couldn’t look through the murky mesh at the colorful world outside—that filthy window.
Without realizing it, my story and journey began with those materials that lived with me.
 I found no truer way to create dialogue with the artwork.

With thread, I draw. With sheer, multi-colored tulle fabric, I paint—without using any pigments or dyes.
Unlike that dark shadow… this is a colored shadow.
It carried me into a fragile life, delicate in its sensitivity, and profound in its expression.

A symbol in her work is the butterfly, which she approaches not as a decorative motif but as a metaphor for fleeting beauty, transformation, and the delicate strength of survival. In a separate reflection, she writes:

جنازة فراشة
 لم تكن صُدفة حين أتت الفراشة. تحيّرتُ، وبحثتُ عنها، وعن رمزيتها، ومشوارها الشبق للضوء، هشاشتها وجمالها، رقّتها التي تناقض جسدها. مشوارٌ سريع، وحياةٌ قصيرة، تأتي برهة وتختطف قلبك.
 كل ذلك حدث في لحظة…
 فما بالك إنْ كان العالم يدهس تلك الرقة، ويمشي في جنازتها؟
 يثور، يهاجر، يرقص، يتحوّل…
 ربما إلى فراشة

The Funeral of a Butterfly
It was no coincidence when the butterfly arrived.
I was puzzled—I searched for her, for her symbolism, for her journey, drawn so passionately to the light.

Her fragility, her beauty, her delicacy—so unlike her body.
A swift journey, a short life—she comes for a moment and steals your heart.

All of that happened in an instant…

So imagine, then, if the world tramples on that delicacy and marches in her funeral.
It rebels, migrates, dances, transforms...
Perhaps into a butterfly.

Abo Rabieh’s work resists erasure. Through thread and tulle, she reconstructs fragments of memory and vulnerability, offering a delicate yet unflinching form of visual testimony.