Naturally Surrealistic L
ara Zankoul is a visual artist based in Beirut whose work captures every human behavior and the issues that occur within society through photographic media and video and 3D mediums. Her aim is to allow her audiences to come up with their own interpretation and understanding of the works and the stories behind them. “My work is heavily based on experimentation and world building to create moments and craft them rather than just document them. My art [is] conceptual, dreamy, surreal and minimal,” she says. Lara became interested in art from a very young age. She remembers how much she enjoyed attending art exhibitions and looking at photos from fashion magazines and wishing she could capture photos like the ones she was seeing. But she always assumed she wasn’t very cre-
ative, basing that assumption on the fact that she excelled in mathematical subjects at school. “I decided to study economics at university, not because I loved it, but because it seemed like a safe choice back then. When I first started my full-time job as an economics researcher, I decided to buy a camera and teach myself photography,” Lara says. Lara’s surrealist style of art came very naturally. She uses photography to escape reality rather than document it. “It started by defying gravity, photographing misplaced objects, changing the function of objects, or playing with proportions. All these techniques led to this surreal aspect. Using the camera –which was primarily created to capture reality – to document surrealism was the challenge that kept me passionate.”
ArtDiction | 22 | November/December 2021
