Collective Exhibition, BEYroute

This exhibition revolves around the nexus of photographs to memory. Lebanon has long suffered wars, civil and uncivil, and this exhibition in particular seeks ways of bringing artistic sensibility to the realm of war by exploring its effects on the imaginative life worlds of the artists who were both inspired and affected by their experiences of Lebanon’s war(s).  This exhibition addresses such questions as: How do photographs carry memory across space and time? How do they mediate culture and identity? 

Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity, through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood. 

Dalia Khamissy is a Lebanese photographer based in Beirut. In 2010, Khamissy started her ongoing project The Missing of Lebanon, documenting the families of the estimated 17,000 people who went missing during Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and whose fate is still unknown, collecting their stories, following their traces and taking photographs of what they left behind. Since 2011, she has been covering the aftermath of the war in Syria for different NGOs and international publications, documenting the lives of refugees who fled their countries and found refuge in Lebanon and Jordan.

Roy Samaha is a Lebanese artist and photographer. His work deals with personal history, death, mourning, and the memory of personal objects. His critique is focused on the constant assault of images (both propaganda and advertising) one is subjected to in contemporary society.

George Haddad is a Lebanese photographer who also currently works in Jordan. 

Ayla Hibri is a painter, drawer and photographer from Beirut. She has collected an expansive archive of visual data on the psychogeography of places and the ubiquitous aspects of the human condition. 

Born in Austria to an Austrian mother and a Lebanese father, Tanya Traboulsi spent her childhood traveling back and forth between the two countries. Tanya’s work explores highly personal themes of belonging, identity and memory, as well as the sociological stigmas relating to female identity.

Rayya Haddad’s photographs are primarily focused on individuals, couples as well as nudes. This occurs through a collaboration between them and the camera as a witness. She also photographs products ranging from fine jewelry to the culinary arts.

Rola Khayyat is a Lebanese interdisciplinary artist and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores new dimensions on the representation of war, memory, and identity.