GINANE MAKKI BACHO
MATERIAL REMAINS
GINANE MAKKI BACHO FATHALLAH ZAMROUD
Ayyam Gallery Beirut 3 April - 31 May 2014
Ginane Makki Bacho was born in Beirut in 1947, where she currently lives and works. She received a Master’s of Fine Arts in Printmaking and Painting from Pratt Institute, New York (1987) and a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the Lebanese American University, Beirut (1982). Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at Ayyam Gallery, Beirut (2013); ArtCircle, Beirut (2010); Agial Art Gallery, Beirut (2004); and a retrospective of her works at the French Cultural Center, Beirut (2005), in addition to group shows at Fa Gallery, Kuwait (2012), Beirut Art Center (2009); the Lebanese Association of Artists and Sculptors in Beirut (2013, 2012, 2010, 2009); the Biennale Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria (2008); and Sursock Museum, Beirut (2006). Bacho’s work is held in public and private collections including the Centre Culturel Francais, Beirut; the Museum of Digne les Bains; Cabo Frio Museum, Rio de Janeiro; the Arab League, Washington DC; the Hariri Foundation, Washington DC, and the Biblioteca Alexandrina, Alexandria. She is also known for her artist books, such as Face to Face, The Artist as Woman and Mother (1985), Ginane, Diary of a Woman (1986), Extraordinary People (1998), and Dichotomie en Blanc et Noir (2009).
Fathallah Zamroud was born in Beirut in 1968 and is a painter of Syrian-Lebanese origins. He trained as an interior architect at the Lebanese American Univerisity prior to embarking on a seven-year studio intensive with local painter Louna Maalouf. Working alongside Maalouf, he gained knowledge of various formal techniques and experimented with a range of drawing and painting media. His recent paintings reflect the critical perceptions of space that have come with his training in architecture and fine art and his interest in the rigorous brushwork and emphatic uses of color of the German Expressionists.
Material Remains: Memory through the Mediated Object By Zarmina Rafi and Maymanah Farhat
Material Remains pairs two recent series of works by artists who approach the subject of war through the reflective ethos of the creative process in order to confront and make sense of the suspension of space and time that is wreaked by encroaching disaster. Through a twelvepart sculptural installation, Ginane Makki Bacho offers an exploration of nearly forty years of ruptured memory and history while Fathallah Zamroud responds to the recent impact of a bordering conflict on a country that has been culturally linked and politically interconnected to its neighbour through deep-rooted ties stretching back centuries. Given their irrefutable interdependence and geographic proximity, the recent violence in Syria has increasingly permeated Lebanon, most profoundly through the fissures of the latter’s continuously fragmented state. Although the artists engage with different wars separated by over two decades, the events to which they respond may be read as an accumulated and prolonged period of violence. Bacho’s installation takes as its focal point the iconic Burj Al Murr, a concrete tower built in 1974 located in downtown Beirut, a city that the artist has loved, left, and later returned to inhabit. The tower was designed to be a world-class trade centre but instead became the stronghold of snipers and militiamen during the most volatile years of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90). To weld the multipart series was no easy task, as the artist had to create vertical works of varying heights and widths, each forty storey high structure containing a total of twelve windows across its individual floors. Yet the “Matryoskha doll” effect produced in the creation of the edifice in so many scales can be understood as the artist’s attempt to peel back the layers of time that seem to coat the surface of the Burj Al Murr, arriving at the abject core of the civil war that still psychologically grips Beirut residents, who must live in the shadow of the now insidious structure and others
like it. Here trauma is manifest into the tangible, and the physical act of executing the series has provided a cathartic sense of empowerment for the artist. Aside from this deeply personal connection to the work, placing the series in the public confines of the gallery space where viewers can freely engage with the replicas extends the interventionist potential of Bacho’s creative gesture.
seem to define their surrounding landscapes. This partitioning of the picture plane in the foreground and center of the composition gives way to landscapes and skies that are painted with the the fluidity and force seen in large bodies of water, evoking Courbet’s “landscapes of the sea.” In Zamroud’s untitled scenes, which are primarily devoid of human subjects, the earth rises in tumult, enveloping these sites, then collapses under the weight of devastation.
The artist has worked with local symbolism before. Widely known for her 1983 sculptural work, Cedars, Bacho used shrapnel collected from outside of her home and studio after a period of shelling to create mesmerising organic forms. Cedars, with horizontally spreading branches and fragrant wood, are the national emblem of Lebanon, more importantly they are a symbol of life and longevity. In the realization of this work the artist fashioned material evidence of disaster into a reimagined symbol of defiance coupled with hope and a movement towards growth.
When painting vacant alleyways, debris, and empty lots or dirt roads, the artist makes significant use of white hues, variations on a colour that is often associated with absence. Interestingly, in Bacho’s installation the meticulous rendering of the negative spaces of windows required more physical effort on the part of the welder than the production of a simple steel column. In Material Remains, absence gains precedence and is foregrounded as a place of contemplation.
Compelled by the immediacy of the steady news stream of the war in Syria, Zamroud, who is Lebanese-Syrian, has collected images of the conflict since 2011. These photographs were later used as partial studies for his painted compositions. When depicting disintegrating cities or the swelling yet desolate camps of the displaced, Zamroud zooms in on remnants and objects such as tires, ladders, temporary roofing materials, and tarpaulin. The artist’s expressionist compositions recall the restless brushstrokes of painters such as Karl Shmidt-Rottluff and Emil Nolde while his muted palette allows the viewer to enter such scenes “behind the surface of the real,” a place of pathos that Carla SchulzHoffmann once observed in the work of Max Beckmann during his exiled years in Amsterdam. Originally trained as an architect before embarking on a seven-year studio intensive with Lebanese painter Louna Maalouf, Zamroud’s deconstruction of space is rendered with particular attention to how these built environments
Text copyright the authors and Ayyam Gallery, 2014.
GINANE MAKKI BACHO
Burj El Murr 2013 Mixed steel Installation of twelve individual sculptures
FATHALLAH ZAMROUD
Untitled 2013 Acrylic on canvas 180 x 180 cm
Untitled 2013 Acrylic on canvas 180 x 180 cm
Untitled 2013 Acrylic on canvas 180 x 180 cm
Untitled 2013 Acrylic on canvas 180 x 180 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 160 x 160 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 170 x 180 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 170 x 180 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 160 x 170 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 190 x 180 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 190 x 190 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 190 x 190 cm
Untitled 2014 Acrylic on canvas 160 x 160 cm
Ayyam Gallery Founded in Damascus in 2006, Ayyam Gallery is recognised as a leading cultural voice in the region, representing a roster of Middle Eastern artists with an international profile and museum presence. Spaces in Beirut, Dubai, Jeddah, and London have further succeeded in showcasing the work of Middle Eastern artists with the aim of educating a wider audience about the art of this significant region.
Ayyam Gallery, Beirut Beirut Tower, G.Floor, Zeitoune Street, Beirut Marina, Solidere T: +961 1 374450/51 beirut@ayyamgallery.com www.ayyamgallery.com
FATHALLAH ZAMROUD