He Who Gazes At The Sea; The Man And The Land
The subject emerges stubbornly from inside the paint, conversing with the problem of what even is a subject, a surface, knowing more clearly what is the paint. And yet, the subject is clear, does emerge strongly from gesture and thickness, emerges from the silence within. I suspect this is what silence looks like. Silence need not be at peace after all. The silence afterwards, the absence of noise.
Tagreed Darghouth is an artist who has consistently shown an attention to the political realities of contemporary life, both in the region, and as a part of more global concerns. Surveillance has been an important theme, from her 2015 exhibition ‘Shall you see me better now’ a series depicting portraits of CCTV cameras, to ‘Vision machines’, tackling the subject of drones. But as well as technology, the land has taken her attention, and in switching scale and emphasis, she shows the watched as well as the watcher, a subject perhaps felt most keenly in the series, ‘The tree within, a Palestinian olive tree’.
Darghouth steps back in order to see, and then moves closer. This switching of scale finds an echo in the manner of her painting, taking objects and experiences from our everyday world – objects and
experiences that are not benign, but yet are accepted – concentrating on them until they cannot be overlooked. Her skies are filled with such anxious objects.
The work contains a silent violence, a judgement of selective vision.
Darghouth studied Superior studies, Painting and Sculpting at the Lebanese University of Fine Art, Beirut, Lebanon in 2000 followed by Space Art at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), Paris, France in 2003. In 2000 and 2001 she trained under the Syrian-German artist Marwan Kassab Bashi at Darat Al Funoun in Amman. In 2004, Darghouth had her first solo exhibition, Still Features, at Zico House in Beirut and since then has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Beirut and internationally.
Selected solo and group exhibitions include: Arteclassica, 3era, Feria de Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2006; Mirror, Mirror!, Agial Art Gallery, Beirut in 2008; Subtitled: With Narratives from Lebanon at the Royal College of Art in London in 2011; Canticle of Death, Agial Art Gallery, Beirut in 2011; Re-orientation II,
Rose Issa Project, London, UK in 2012; Thin Skin: Six Artists from Beirut at Taymour Grahne Gallery in New York in 2014; Vision Machines, Agial Art Gallery, Beirut in 2015; 100 Chefs d’Oeuvre de L’Art Moderne et Contemporain Arabe, La Collection Barjeel, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France in 2017; Analogy to Human Life, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut in 2018; Toys and Trophies: From Zeus’ Pandora to Barbie Doll, Tabari Artspace, Dubai, UAE in 2020 and A City Undisguised; Beirut: No Home No Exile, Cromwell Place, London, UK in 2022. She currently works and lives in the UAE.
For the painters and poets, Laura J. Braverman, Amy Todman and Afaf Zurayk, of Faith in the Forming painting and poetry share an equal weight, though not a weight that can be measured on a scale. Rather the balance is one of knowing what is already there, what is coming from within. A word can be placed beside every painting, but this is hardly the point. Rather, for some, the painting or poem might arrive alongside its neighbour, might suggest itself perplexedly. Indeed, the relationship of the poem to the painting may be unclear, perhaps must remain a little unknown, because the painting and the word, though related, reach toward singular spaces, both of which continue to unfold alongside one another.
