Oussama Diab is a Palestinian - Syrian contemporary artist whose work drifts between memory and myth, figuration and abstraction, capturing the deep tremors of exile, identity, and transformation. Born in Damascus in 1977, Diab came of age in a region marked by rupture, carrying within him the layered history of displacement. He now lives and works in the Netherlands, a land far from his roots but woven into his evolving artistic vocabulary. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 2002, Diab has since cultivated a language of images that resists fixity, choosing instead to shift with each new series like a tide returning to unfamiliar shores.

In his paintings, the personal meets the political in intricate, poetic choreography. Symbols float across his canvases like fragments of forgotten dreams or long-lost songs. Traces of war, echoes of migration, and the residue of revolutions are gently folded into scenes that evoke both tenderness and unrest. His figures stand against ornate, almost infinite backdrops, bathed in patterns that dissolve the boundaries of space and time. There is no clear beginning, no defined end, only a persistent unfolding, a visual murmuring that invites reflection more than resolution.

Diab describes his work as autobiographical, yet it reaches far beyond the self. His characters, often suspended in gestures of longing or stillness, embody the quiet ache of those caught between worlds. Their grace does not deny their sorrow; it heightens it, allowing melancholy to settle like dust on velvet. Amid icons of pop culture, historical motifs, and whimsical symbolism, the viewer encounters a dialogue between playfulness and gravity, between ornament and loss. His paintings become places of passage, where memory does not settle but continues to move.

Over the years, Diab has taken part in numerous group exhibitions across the Middle East and Europe. He is the recipient of several honors, including recognition from the Shabab Young Artists exhibition in Syria. His solo exhibitions with Ayyam Gallery in Damascus, Dubai, and Beirut between 2009 and 2012 marked important milestones in his journey. Each show revealed a new gesture, a new rhythm in his evolving dance with image and meaning.

Through all of this, Oussama Diab remains an artist of movement, not only across borders, but across styles, symbols, and states of being. His canvases are not declarations but invitations, quiet calls to wander through the layered terrains of memory, exile, and imagination. With every brushstroke, he gives form to what resists containment. His art reminds us that beauty can coexist with sorrow, and that even in displacement, there is a rhythm that continues, steady and profound, like a heartbeat beneath the surface of the world.