EXHIBITIONS
Walid Sadek is an artist and writer. His early work from mid to late 1990s investigates the familial legacies of the Lebanese civil war. He later begins to posit, mostly in theoretical texts, ways of understanding the complexity of lingering civil strife in times of relative social and economic stability. His later written work, between 2006 and 2016, proposes a theory for post war-society disinclined to resume normative living. During those years, his artworks seek a poetics for a sociality governed by the logic of protracted war and search for eruptive temporalities to challenge that same protractedness. Around 2016, sensing a fundamental socio-political and intellectual change in the country, Sadek decide to conclude his post-war work which up until then grappled in various ways with the conditions of living in a protracted now. In a text published in 2019 titled “A surfeit of Victims: A Time After Time”, he begins to theorize the conditions of living in a time after the time of post war, during which the memories of war are reduced to empty ciphers that can no longer constate a shared history.
Paintings 2020-2022 is his first exhibition of paintings and his first solo show in Lebanon since 2010.
Walid Sadek is professor in the Department of Fine arts and Art history at the American University of Beirut.
Nelsy Massoud’s sculpture titled Metamorphosis expands on the transformative aspect of the being. Existence is performative and metamorphic, entailing a constant assertion of the being through the mutability of the self. Similarly, “caterpillars turn into butterflies,” or when “materials take new forms,” the structural loofahs bare new life forms. Metamorphosis is showing at the Saleh Barakat Gallery upper floor.
Born and raised in Lebanon in 1957, Nelsy Massoud first moved to Ivory Coast for four years before residing in New York for 23 years, where she learned glass mosaic and became the assistant of a master mosaicist Val. After a few open house exhibitions in New York, Massoud moved to Montreal, where she opened a gallery and workshop of mosaic for students, before coming back to Beirut in 20005. For five years, she was a manager and curator at 392 Rmeil 393 gallery in Beirut. In her exploration of various media, such as sand, polythene or glass, Massoud found a particular interest in the intertwining of light and colors in loofahs.
The Passion of saving the “moment before” beauty remains free of defeat, an echo of what is left, a shortcut to Freedom. -Bernard Ghanem
Since childhood, Bernard Ghanem (Lebanon, b.1963) had a talent in transforming any raw material and scraps into objects of play which captured and engaged people around him. A student of life, he developed a talent nourished by his sensibility and natural ability to create art out of ordinary material.
He moved from designing day to day lighting, to his first creative work of light, his sculpture ”The Dancer” in 1992, followed by another work of art,” The Escape”, etc. He is also an associate artist of the Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne. He had three solo exhibitions, in 1996, 2001 and 2012 at ”Agial Art Gallery”, Beirut. In 2002 Bernard traveled to the United Kingdom where he held numerous exhibitions in Hutton in the Forest Historic House,Cumbria followed at Kingston Lacy House, Dorset. His sculpture ”Progress” became part of the permanent collection of Lady and Lord Hutton’s permanent art collection. He is also a member of the Cumbria Sculptors Association. He held his solo exhibition “Balance” at Fire & Iron Gallery in 2003 UK.
In May 2008, three of his sculptures were chosen to be part of the gallery’s permanent collection and to be part of Surrey Sculptural Trail held every year at the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisely, Surrey, UK.In 2013 he held with 60 Artists the largest ever Exhibition of sculptures in Lebanon at MACAM « Modern And Contemporary Art Museum » six of his sculptures, one metre high, was dedicated to “MACAM” followed by a second donation “Prisoners”, six metres high, in 2014, and a third donation “Society”, six metres high, in 2018, to be preserved for future generations. Bernard lives and works in Lebanon.