Syria-born Serene Debs used to watch foreign consulates in Hong Kong host year-round public events and sponsor artists to come to the city, and wished that her home region enjoyed the same level of visibility.
Her solution? Founding her own cultural “embassy”, called Make Du Si, to represent Syria and its Arabic-speaking neighbours in the Levant – a region east of the Mediterranean Sea – through arts and culture.
Debs, a mixed-media artist and art educator, explains that the name Make Du Si comes from the Cantonese pronunciation of the Arabic word makdous, a cured eggplant dish common in the Levant.
Specifically, her “embassy” aims to represent the four countries in the Levant that lack diplomatic representation in Hong Kong: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.
Debs moved to Hong Kong in 2016 at the age of 24, but her family’s connection to the city goes back decades.
“In the 1940s, my grandfather and his brothers came to East Asia to do business. My grandfather was in Shanghai, where he met my Russian grandmother,” she says.
