FROM THE CITY THAT EXPLODED SLOWLY -  

Wall-Composition & Text 1:

 When I was 5, my mother took me to a large department store, called Byblos, on Martyr’s Square. She bought my first schoolbag there. I remember it well and I see myself holding it: its rubbery texture, rounded corners and black and white colours, all still tangible in my mind. People in Beirut often wondered why this store never did well despite its incessant publicity. After the war and extensive excavations, it was discovered that the store’s foundations had encroached on the very first walls of Beirut, Birut or Birayat as it was then called in 15 BC. Some people thought that was probably the reason it was jinxed.

PIECE IN 'EAST & WEST : VISUALISING THE OTTOMAN CITY' EXHIBITION 

ABOUT THE CITY THAT EXPLODED SLOWLY (PHOTO-TEXT SERIES):

 

War and wilderness are often there in my work and sometimes converge more closely, as in the series The City That Exploded Slowly, because stories of warfare and of our abuse of the environment stem both from man’s struggle to control, tame and own the wilderness. My
art practice has evolved over the years into a multi-disciplinary approach combining photography and creative writing and mainly stems from an engagement with issues of migrancy, memory and identity most often relating to The Lebanon, my place of birth, and its history of conflicts.

What became a defining moment in my practice was experiencing the devastation of the centre of Beirut at the end of the civil war (1975-1990) on a scale rarely encountered. It is against this background of vast erasure that I started this autobiographical body of work including this series with the impetus of relocating memories in a space that seems to be endlessly entangled in a double helix of transformation and dissolution. At the core, was the notion that, for my mother as for myself, our sense of selves and our (hi)stories were deeply bound to this part of Beirut and its singular configuration and starting from the premise that there is always a city that lives on in each of us, I set out to map a trail of memories that was entrenched with the many transformations of Beirut. A process of re-visiting and re-translation by way of memory aided in coming to terms with the sense of loss and unreplaceability of place. 
There is a total of 6 wall-compositions in this series but only 4 will be shown in this exhibition. Each wall-composition consists of my own writing juxtaposed with a black and white photograph of my mother taken by street-photographers and a colour photograph  taken over several years in and around  the city centre of Beirut.

CURATING EXHIBITION: 

EAST AND WEST : VISUALISING THE OTTOMAN CITY (6-30 June)

 

It is all finally coming together after months of paperwork and liaising, the catalogue and publicity are being printed and artworks are at the framer ( Adrian at Possible Frames, totally gets your concept). It has been a very enjoyable experience to work with artists Aikaterini Gegisian, Paris Petridis and the Ottoman team. Matt Emmins did also a beautiful design job on all our publicity and catalogue.

Only 10 days away, the exhibition will open on Friday June 6 (6-9 pm) with a performance by Alev Adil. More events for your diary - all free:

Friday 20 June, 6 - 9 pm

Artists’ Talks and Roundtable with Shoair Mavlian, Tate Modern, and Reem Akl, Arab Foundation for the Image
Thursday 26 June, 7 - 9 pm
Roundtable with Ruba Asfahani, Arab British Centre; Bea Lewkowicz, Sephardi Voices UK and Nouritza Matossian, Armenian Institute

Venue : Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

Opening Times : Mon-Fri 9am – 9 pm & Sat 9am – 5pm

Website: http://ottomancosmopolitanism.wordpress.com/exhibition