Rebirth Lebanon
Curator Lara Mansour describes the Rebirth Lebanon exhibition at the
Dazed Gallery as a 'spontaneous emotional response' to the events of
the summer. A summer which saw a country that has worked hard to
rebuild itself as a progressive cultural mosaic of the Middle East
widely perceived once again as a place of violence, division and
cyclical conflict, all within a matter of days.
This month's Dazed Gallery exhibition brings together a number of
Lebanese artists, each working in their own particular mediums, with
their take on the events that shook the country this summer. Each
artist below explains their experience of being under siege, and what
prompted them to pick up their weapon, be it a pen, paintbrush or
camera.
(Click on the portraits above for more about each artist.)
Lebanon's civil infrastructure was torn to shreds and thousands of people were displaced in a bloody assault upon the region that followed the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Hizbollah, a response that some world leaders described as hugely disproportionate. It was the worst violence the region has seen since the darkest days of the civil war and the Israeli invasion of 1982 in which the late Ariel Sharon was implicated in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Now with the current demonstrations against Fouad Siniora's government threatening to plunge the region into yet another civil war Lara wants her exhibition to divert attention away from religion and politics, to negate some popular held misconceptions about Lebanese culture and give a platform to the diverse talent and creativity contained therein. Art, she believes, in its secular way can genuinely help to bridge divides, 'Tolstoy said 'Art like speech is a means of communication - whereas by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his feelings' it is precisely those feelings that need to be communicated to unite the Lebanese people.'
I Love Beirut stickerIn the 1960's Beirut was seen as possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the Arab world and the artists Lara has chosen for the exhibition represent something of a contemporary renaissance, Karen Karam's fantasy filled collection of dresses for instance, promote Lebanese fashion designers' work as conceptual, sexy and radically progressive while The Lebanon Chronicle's inadvertently subversive adoption of the 'I Love NY' slogan is a graphic representation of how loved Beirut truly is.
Look further and you will find a harrowing feature by Beirut DC (shown at the bottom of this page), a group founded to support independent filmmakers producing films questioning pre-established forms, transmitting the clear message that Lebanon, in the midst of international silence, is still capable of resistance and love. This is set against a backdrop of Rachel Tabet's photographs of smiling displaced children at play, reminding us that laughter is a source of survival for a people that have developed an almost culturally specific stoicism. But all of this is only to scratch at the surface of this incredibly diverse collection that also contains work by, amongst others, Zena el Khalil and Marzen Kerbaj, two names that have become synonymous with the summer conflict.
Rebirth Lebanon aims to reset the clock that Israel's Chief of Staff vowed to 'set back twenty years' at the beginning of the summer, a moment that was to become defining in concreting solidarity between the Lebanese. Now, more than ever, Lara believes the Lebanese people need something to reinforce that solidarity so that they don't divide again along the same old religious and political lines, 'The only way to really get Lebanon's image changed, and to erase stereotypes, is if Lebanon itself does it. It only takes one or two initiatives to stir some interest, but it will need more people, the whole country united, to have the power to change'.