Elyse Tabet
I'm a 23 years old Lebanese designer/graphic artist. I grew up between the Beirut suburbia , the sunny northern coast and the southern green fields (briefly before those were mine-fields again).
Q & A
Most of the work featured in Rebirth Lebanon seems to have a spontaneous, reactionary feel in its expression. What prompted you to illustrate?
Sketching has always been my most therapeutic expression. During the war there were many nights when I would stay up all night and scribble random war-related scenarios because it was impossible to think of anything else.
What sort of reactions, positive and/or negative, did your work receive upon its first diffusion?
Viewers from around the world were telling me that our art was helping them see the human side to it all rather than the political and they were mostly surprised to find all those Lebanese blogs documenting the war on so many levels.
How do you view the role held by artistic expression in Lebanon, especially in relation to the current crisis?
I believe that in the middle of all the political dilemmas of our world today, it is impossible to draw lines of absolute right-and-wrongs. What artists can do is bring out the human aspects of a situation and stress on it, because at the end of the day, what’s worth fighting for if not humanity?
What does "Rebirth Lebanon" mean to you?
In Rebirth Lebanon, Lebanese artists are putting their efforts together to address the world. It is one strong way of conveying the real Lebanese spirit, and what we have to give, from a more individual and heartfelt angle, opposed to what global media suggests.
http://littlepaperboat.livejournal.com/
