Internationally-renowned artist Issam Kourbaj was born in Syria and trained at the Institute of Fine Arts in Damascus, the Repin Institute of Fine Arts & Architecture in Leningrad (St Petersburg) and at Wimbledon School of Art. He has lived in Cambridge, UK, since 1990.

Since 2011 his artwork has related to the Syrian Crisis and reflects on the suffering of his fellow Syrians and the destruction of his cultural heritage.

His work has been widely exhibited and collected, and most recently it was featured in several museums and galleries around the world: Fitzwilliam Museum, Classical Archaeology Museum, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; British Museum and V&A, London; Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Venice Biennale and the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.

His Dark Water, Burning World is in the permanent collection of the Pergamon Museum and the British Museum. For the BBC’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ Neil MacGregor (the former Director of the British Museum) chose Dark Water, Burning World as the 101st object.

Upper Hall