The Syrian artist Youssef Abdelke (b. 1951) was captured on Thursday by the Syrian regime.

This was not the first time he gets detained by the same regime for his political views. Member of the Syrian Communist Action Organization, Abdelke’s first imprisonment was in the late seventies, which led him in 1980 to a 25-year exile in France. His return in 2005 was shortly followed by the revolution he must have dreamed of in his youth. Despite the silencing of the Syrian people’s uprising by a ravaging civil war, Abdelkeh was still hopeful and refused to flee or surrender to the weight of despair. He is quoted saying:

“This was an awaited moment, you cannot turn your back while your home is on fire, such a unique moment laden with sacrifice and hope, forces one to stay and not run.”

Abdelke was among the signatories of the recent manifesto by ‘100 Syrian intellectuals’ (published on 19/7/2013) claiming to restitute the original motives of the revolution premised on demands of ‘freedom, dignity, social justice and national unity’. The manifesto is believed to have been the reason behind his arrest.

In solidarity with the imprisoned artist, signs of conflict digs out from its archive Youssef Abdelke’s political posters for the Lebanese Communist Party, dating to the 1980s during his short passage to Beirut while on his way to exile, as well as some of his illustrated children's books for Dar al-Fata al-Arabi.

More political posters attributed to Abdelke in support of the Palestinian Resistance can be found on the Palestine Poster Project Archives