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11/12/2014

Exposure 2014

Beirut Art Center, Beirut

Beirut Art Center is pleased to present Exposure 2014/Under Construction, the sixth edition of its annual exhibition for emerging artists in or from Lebanon. For the first time since 2009, Exposure will be a curated exhibition featuring the works of nine artists selected by BAC together with a jury invited for the occasion. This year’s jury members were Mounira al Solh, Sam Bardaouil & Till Fellrath, Jim Quilty, and Kirsten Scheid.

The title Under Construction resonates with the exhibition’s theme and refers to the on-going active and vital processes of evolution that occur at the level of constructing the landscape, the artistic practice and the self. It stands for the trajectory Exposure has followed since its initiation, and that Marie Muracciole intends to continue.

Exposure is a space where emerging artists raise questions and reflect upon the experiences that have so far informed their artistic practices. It is equally a space where the viewers, both witness and spectator, are invited to interact with these questions and reflections. The very words ‘under construction’ underline the forms of change that unsettle fixed conceptions and present possibilities of being open to the foreign or the unknown. Thus, the theme ‘under construction’ points to processes of transformation: to construct means to put things together, to assemble distinct parts into something new, to place disparate elements in a temporal proximity of one another, thus initiating their mutual interactions.

Like every year, some of the artists selected are Lebanese while others have lived or passed through the country. Most of them have established a particular relationship with this unique city that would leave its traces in their practice. The theme of Exposure recalls the particularities of being in Beirut where the landscape is regularly destroyed and rebuilt - and hence redrawn - the word ‘construction’ becomes synonymous with metamorphosis, where change is often a domain of merging processes of creation, destruction and entropy.

Jessika Khazrik and Arjuna Neuman have each worked on the environment, in ecological and spatial terms. The results are sculptural objects, both documentary and poetic. Khazrik unearths, interrogates, and symbolically reactivates a recent historical episode that was buried or had vanished. She inquires in Introduction to the Blue Barrel Grove I, into a scandal involving ’blue barrels’ in the 1970’s in Lebanon brought up by a scientist. Her work draws parallels between art and science by animating research and experimentation through her project.

Neuman takes a skeptical look on the horizon we draw for ourselves. By reproducing Monet‘s Nymphéas through ordinary contemporary objects, Neuman draws relations between construction and nature by building a concrete pond with electric flowers.

Tanya Traboulsi produced a photographic installation out of interviews with women on the issue of marriage. Through sound and ima4ge, Traboulsi presents her own self-portraits that embody the voices of the women she interviews. Roy Dib filmed a short fiction on intimacy, otherness, love and politics. The projection’s setup reveals the fragility of the boundaries between private and public.

Georgette Power strives towards her own dematerialization; she is Benjamin Moukarzel’s verbal and enduring double. She lives through his work, which makes use of enigmatic texts and computer generated images. Nour Bishouty and Mirna Bamieh have both connected their research to the workings of memory. Bishouty re-arranges traces and objects belonging to a relative, as if to re-invent her. She will, for instance, cover the outside walls of Beirut Art Center with the sewing pattern of a dress that belonged to this woman. Bamieh imagines and indexes peculiar memorization methods through video and collections of objects with real and imaginary references.

The works on paper of Hiba Kalache are made of voluntary and fortuitous exchanges and interactions. Her drawings are like palimpsests representing Beirut through the city’s ability to absorb traces and temporal disjunctions, rather than through mimesis. Tala Worrell’s paintings playfully depict figures in their environment, unfolding a visual text that moves with ease from line to gesture, writing to color. Her drawings and drafts travel from paper to fabric and other media, as through different levels of language.

Image: Tanya Traboulsi, Something Borrowed, Ghida Y., 44 (2014)

Opening: Friday December 12 from 6pm to 9pm

Beirut Art Center
Jisr El Wati - Off Corniche an Nahr. Building 13
Street 97, Zone 66 Adlieh. Beirut, Lebanon.

Opening Hours
From Monday to Saturday 12:00pm - 8:00pm
Closed:
25 December (Christmas Day)
1 January (New Year's Day), The Prophet's Birthday, Good Friday (Roman-Catholic & Greek-Orthodox)

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