OUT OF BEIRUT
13 MAY TO 16 JULY 2006
Modern Art Oxford presents the UK's most comprehensive exhibition of work by artists emerging from Beirut today.
Since the end of the civil war in 1990, Beirut has become a fertile ground for radical and innovative art making and critical thought. Out of Beirut introduces to the UK new and recent work by artists who have been at the forefront of this activity.
Film maker Lamia Joreige maps a landscape of memory as she walks the former Green Line dividing east and west Beirut to interview residents about those who went missing during the civil war. Walid Sadek?s poetic text paintings question the possibility of creating an art of the future within a society caught in an imagined and idealised past while Walid Raad?s dramatic photomontage of drawings, notes and recorded images attempts to capture Beirut as a city that constantly reminds residents of its own fragility.
A number of the works in the exhibition offer insight into the ways in which artists respond to political events as they are happening around them. Distracted Bullets, a video installation by artists and filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, maps the city according to public displays of celebration on different religious and civic holidays. Ziad Abillama?s video captures the hopes of Beirut?s residents gathering in Martyr?s Square after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The exhibition also includes new work made for the exhibition by Jalal Toufic, Akram Zaatari and the anonymous artists? collective Heartland, who are creating a floor covering based on a rescaled map of Lebanon for the Gallery?s non-art spaces.
The cross-disciplinary nature of much artistic practice in Beirut is also highlighted in the exhibition which includes renowned Beirut architect Bernard Khoury?s film on his underground night-club BO18, and Tony Chakar?s A Window To The World, 2005, in which the intimate observations of personal experience assume the conventions of architectural display.
Performances, Film Screenings, Talks, Symposium, Book
The exhibition also includes performance-based work and film screenings presented at Modern Art Oxford and at other venues in the city. A film-screening programme, specially conceived for Out of Beirut and curated by Beirut-based curator Christine Tohme, presents the work of film makers from Beirut, Turkey and the Middle East during the course of the exhibition.An ambitious programme of artists? talks and events forms an integral part of Out of Beirut.
Bernard Khoury will be in conversation at Modern Art Oxford during Architecture Week in June.
Public Time: A Symposium will take place on 25 and 26 May, providing an opportunity for a general and specialist audience to hear an international panel of speakers discuss issues facing contemporary artists in Beirut. Speakers include Negar Azimi, editor of Bidoun magazine, Catherine David, curator and Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin, Eugene Rogan, Director, The Middle East Centre, St. Antony?s College, Oxford, and Stephen Wright, Programme Director, Collège International de Philosophie, Paris.
Modern Art Oxford is producing a fully-illustrated book documenting the work of artists in Out of Beirut and featuring artists? writings, an interview with Stephen Wright and new essays by Kalen Wilson-Goldie, Simon Harvey and Suzanne Cotter. Available from 13 May.
Out of Beirut is organised by Modern Art Oxford. Curated by Suzanne Cotter, Senior Curator, with the collaboration of Christine Tohme.
Artists in the exhibition: Fadi Abdallah, Ziad Abillama, Tony Chakar, Ali Cherri, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Gilbert Hage, Heartland, Lamia Joreige, Bilal Khbeiz, Bernard Khoury, Rabih Mroué, Walid Raad, Walid Sadek, Jalal Toufic, Paola Yacoub and Michel Lasserre, Akram Zaatari.
For press images and information please call the press office on +44 (0)1865 813813 or email meera.hindocha@modernartoxford.org.uk