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“Subtitled: With Narratives from
Lebanon”
The Association
for the Promotion and Exhibition of the Arts in Lebanon
(APEAL), www.apeal-lb.org presents the first comprehensive exhibition of
contemporary Lebanese art in the UK from 3 to 6 November 2011
at the Royal College of Art in Kensington,
London.
Structured along
five compelling themes the exhibition is designed to help
interpret the country's varied and complex modern history by
Lebanese artists living in and outside Lebanon. The
exhibition will delve into Lebanon’s socio-political
realities, the determinant parameters of which have helped
shaped and influenced a unique trend in post war contemporary
art.
Fouad El
Khoury, The Flag -“Beirut City Center” series
1982
edition 1/5, inkjet on
fine art paper, 120 x 150 cm
Courtesy of the
Christa von Siemens Foundation
Participating
Artists:
Zena Assi |
Ayman Baalbaki | Oussama Baalbaki | Ayah Bdeir | Huguette
Caland | Chaza Charafeddine | Ginou Choueiri | Flavia
Codsi | Tagreed Darghouth | Benoit Debbane | Nancy Debs Hadad|
Laure Ghorayeb | Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige |
Gilbert Hage | Jessica Kalache | Karen Kalou | Abdul Rahman
Katanani | Nadim Karam | Samir Khaddaje | Zena El-Khalil |
Fouad El Khoury | Annie Kurkjian | Mary-Lynn Massoud &
Rasha Nawam | Samar Mogarbel | Jean-Marc Nahas| Mario Saba |
Marwan Sahmarani | Nada Sehnaoui | Mounira Al-Solh
| Hanibal Srouji | Alfred Tarazi | Camille Zakharia | Lamia
Ziade
A special viewing and
reception will be held on Thursday 3 November from 6.00 to
9.00 pm
Hanibal
Srouji, Terre/Mer 2011
acrylic and fire on canvas,
242 x 142 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Janine
Rubeiz
A PANEL
DISCUSSION will form part of the event on
Thursday 3 November, at 7:30pm in the RCA
Senior Common Room:
“Art,
Testimonial or Impulse to Looming
Change?”
Moderator
Monita Rajpal, CNN Correspondent
Panelists
include visual artists:
Nadim Karam
Nada
Sehnaoui
Zena El Khalil
and
Nora Boustany, former journalist and
correspondent of The Washington Post.
Ayah
Bdeir, Elusive Electricity 2011
neon,
steel, motion sensor, cables, custom electronics
in
collaboration with Hirumi Nanayakkara, 70 x 260 cm
Courtesy
of the Artist
Art,
Testimonial or Impulse to Looming
Change?
Freedom of
expression in Lebanon has long been the most unfettered in the
Arab world. However, the oppressive context of
violence from internal conflicts and the intrusion and
meddling of neighboring countries had dented that legacy
considerably in the waning years of the war and its
aftermath. Artists in Lebanon, who mostly remained under
the political radar but continued to produce and create, have
emerged as that small nation’s most authentic conveyors of
anomalies, jarring discrepancies and inconvenient
truths.
We are witnessing
an unprecedented ferment in Arab democratization forces in the
region and a widespread clamor for social change and long due
reforms. In Lebanon, which has seen years of upheaval and
instability, this ferment of indignation and frustrations has
mostly erupted through the channels of creativity. During much
of the past decade, Lebanese artists have spilled their
sensitivity to scenes of dissonance and discomfort with their
environment onto their canvases and captured the fallout of a
modernizing society in the aftermath of a devastating war with
their lenses and installations.
The Association for the
Promotion and Exhibition of the Arts in Lebanon has invited
three artists and a journalist to comment on their experience
and reaction through art to what has gone around
them.
Nadim Karam will
focus in his talk on the galloping urban sprawl that has taken
hold of the city Beirut and some of its Arab sisters, like
Dubai and others, and how a rapidly changing skyline can gut
as well as rebuild the spirit.
Nada Sehnaoui will
talk about the importance of Lebanon’s visual collective
memory in the wake of wars and horrific episodes of
destruction. Her conceptual art and installations have
sought to reconstruct in artistic form the heart-wrenching
mosaic of shattered lives through ordered physical
presentations which only give more intensity to the impact of
demolition in a war zone. Her massive installations,
though simple in their basic concept, like dozens of stacked
or leaning brooms, meant to sweep whatever is undesirable or
inconvenient under the carpet, speak volumes about the
immensity of denial, amnesia and self-delusion that hovers
over Lebanese society.
Zena El Khalil the
youngest of the artists, who had to study abroad and then
returned to experience Beirut and Lebanon immediately after
the war, will share her reactions to a postwar city where
deprivation and ruin still loomed large. She came face
to face with glaring social problems engendered by unwanted
regional intrusions and waves of wanton destruction, which
ravaged her ancestral home and marred her new experiences as a
young woman returning home and coming to grips with her
identity.
Nora Boustany, a
former journalist and correspondent of The Washington Post who
covered the war in Lebanon through its many stages will
attempt to compare the impact and emerging consciousness of
Lebanon’s contemporary artists in chronicling and stylizing
the truth as the visual novelists of an uncharted new era in
the rise of a modern nation.
The Association for
the Promotion and Exhibition of the Arts in Lebanon (APEAL) is
a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing and
encouraging Lebanese artists by projecting their artwork
beyond conventional borders and onto a larger
screen. One of APEAL's goals is to create a
common platform and magnet for
creativity by presenting eclectic collections
gathered from a universe of gifted visual, literary or
performing artists. APEAL strives to be a point of
connection in vital cultural conversations between
civilizations. Composed of Lebanese citizens and
supporters the APEAL committee aims to launch exchange
programs between artists in Lebanon and their counterparts
from international universities and art academies. APEAL
is also dedicated to granting scholarships to promising
talent, and contributing to the formation of trained
curators and professionals to help put them on a par with
their peers the world over. By creating these
opportunities, APEAL is helping nurture the seeds of Lebanon's
artistic potential and preserving its cultural fabric in a
vibrant, forward-looking post-conflict society.
Joana
Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Barmé
(Rounds), 2001
photographic still from video of 7min
30s
Arabic with English and French subtitles
ZENA
ASSI, My City in Carrelage, 2011
mixed
media and collage on canvas, 220 x 180 cm
Courtesy of
Alwane Gallery
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