AMUDA, Syria — Living in Syria is not only about survival. For many Syrian artists, it means keeping creativity alive despite hardships and exploiting unprecedented freedom of expression. According to some artists, the revolution should not be limited to the removal of censorship, but by raising awareness on the most rooted social habits and taboos. Nevertheless, for the time being, most artists who wish to remain in Syria lack any form of institutional and economic support.

Walking around the streets of Amuda — 80 km (50 miles) from the front line between jihadists and Kurdish militias in Ras al-Ain — what goes hardly unnoticed is the large proportion of polyhedral artists, devoting their free time to a wide range of activities. It is common to meet a shopkeeper who is eager to read one of his poems or invite you to listen to him play the tambur (a Kurdish string instrument). This is partly because of the lack of specialization, but it is also the symptom of a thriving cultural scene. "Pablo Picasso used to say, 'We are all born artists, but what's important is how we preserve this art,'" Rishan Ali Yusef, a sculptor, told Al-Monitor. His day job is cutting marble plates in a factory.

About a year has passed since the withdrawal of the regime's troops from the regions with a Syrian Kurdish majority, and most artists still clearly recall the Baathist restrictions. "In 2006, when I finished my baccalaureate, I was denied the diploma from the Ministry of Education in Hassakeh on the grounds that I'm not considered a Syrian citizen. I'm a clandestine, a maktum (one of the thousands of Syrian Kurds who remained stateless after a census conducted in 1962), and so I couldn't enrol in university and achieve my dream of studying fine arts," Ali Yusef said. "After I lost everything, I decided to find my last haven by working on a reproduction of the Roman Colosseum, which took me three years," Ali Yusef continued. His copy of the Colosseum towers over him in all its majesty; it is an impressive work built stone by stone, portraying the theater in its original appearance including the removable pieces conceived to show the underground sector (hypogeum) used for gladiators and animals.

Under the watchful eye of the security forces, even depoliticized comedy aroused suspicions. "In 2007, I took a friend with me to film my interviews in the market during Eid al-Fitr. We put a light bulb on a stick instead of a microphone and asked chickens how they felt before being slaughtered. Security forces interrogated us and yelled, 'Tell us what TV channel you work for!" a popular comedian known by the name of Sherazan told Al-Monitor. Sherazan, sporting a horseshoe moustache and dressed up in a black suit, is always surrounded by the laughs of children, as he makes his way across Amuda telling jokes in the unique manner he acquired when he was a child.