Sometimes, our memories are too much to carry. We hide them in the hunch of our backs and the clench in our jaws because we can't figure out how to let them pass through.
But how else can we let them pass? By blaming our parents? Contextualizing them as broader, "post-war" societies' troubles? To become naive, and obnoxiously-optimistic?
This week’s artists have figured out how to help. Or at least they tried to.
What to see
Syrian Lebanese artist Akram Zavê's “A Thousand Faces,” presented by MA Osseiran Collection and Beirut Black Kat at Rebirth Beirut, explores the silent architecture of family.
Even our faces aren't ours. Neither are our mannerisms, gestures, emotions, or smiles. They're mosaics of pieces collected from our families, friends, and loved ones.
Zavê uses repeated and layered figures to reveal the invisible negotiations of human relationships, and to invite viewers to look at the faces of those around them and see their own.
Click here for more information.
Lebanese artist David Daoud returns to Lebanon for the first time since an Israeli strike destroyed his home in south Lebanon, to present his ode to life.
In true Lebanese fashion, tragedy only makes you more attached to your homeland, or more grateful to everything you have left.
Showing at Galerie Cheriff Tabet in Beirut, "Ode à la Vie," Daoud, usually a true student of the great, this time chooses complete artistic freedom to properly celebrate vitality. For the first time, he paints in a new light and a palette of joyful colors.
Click here for more information.
Where to be
When the weather gets warm in Lebanon, we don't know what to do with ourselves. This is where Bloom comes in. It's hosting its second edition this weekend at Bolero, Batroun, offering you "an immersive artistic celebration of spring."
The floral festival promises to feature live artistic performances, an immersive fashion show, botanical workshops for both children and adults, and "sensory experiences" (what's more sensorial than the sea, flowers, warmth, and company?).
Click here for more information.
The Culture Ministry is launching Cinematheque, its bid to archive Lebanese cinema (as best as it can, at least). They're also offering you a sneak peek into the collection on Thursday evening and Friday morning, at Beirut's National Library.
Click here for more information.
As interdisciplinary work evolves over time, architect and visual artist Rayyane Tabet and AUB saw a convergence between medicine and art, somehow.
Tabet is the inaugural artist-in-residence at the university's faculty of medicine. He has spent the past few months exploring, "What Can We Learn From Forgetting?"
Next Wednesday, his performance/talk at AUB's archeology museum will display forgetting as an active, generative process, with critical questions about memory, ethics, and knowledge in postwar societies.
Click here for more information.
Too overwhelmed to go out?
Every weekend, Yara Malke rounds up L'Orient Today's culture must-reads to at least let you know what you're missing out on.
