Tweet
frieze, UK
March 30 2005
Review: Akram Zaatari
Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany
The first thing encountered was a reading table covered with
publications and rows of postcards showing vintage photographs of
Arab citizens. This was not a cash-strapped institution's hard sell
of exhibition-
related items, but a way of introducing the realm in which Akram
Zaatari works; all the items relate to his ongoing efforts for the
Arab Image Foundation, which he co-founded, dedicated to the
preservation of documents from the Middle East and North Africa.
Zaatari is from Lebanon, a country whose history is marred by both
physical annihilation and memory-related erosion, and his artistic
practice is bound to a concept of salvaging the past, of preserving
documents and collecting stories that contrast with the official
state version of history. `Diversity', he once stated in an
interview, `is the most important factor in resisting collective
misrepresentations [...]. Focusing on individuality thus becomes a
political mission.'
Zaatari's work is indeed political, but not heavy-handed, didactic or
polemical. He creates films that are charming, delicate and intimate,
revealing aspects of his own life and of other people's, illustrating
how broad governmental decisions affect specific personal lives.
Often there is an element of investigation or pursuit, starting with
a premise or a clue, which Zaatari follows to its end, fleshing out a
story, recording his alternative history.
How I Love You (2001) opens with a typed chat-room conversation,
where the artist tries to find gay men - criminals under Lebanese law
- willing to talk on camera about the passions they cannot otherwise
express freely. Zaatari veils their identities not with a clichéd
dark silhouette but with lighting so bright that their features are
bleached out. In Her + Him, Van Leo (2001) a journey is instigated by
a photograph of the narrator's grandmother, posing naked in a
professional studio. The printed signature `Van Leo' leads Zaatari to
Cairo, where the Armenian-Egyptian photographer settled in 1924 and
opened a portrait studio in 1947. The piece weaves the moving colour
portrait of this ageing artist together with his monochrome
portraits. This contrast of images and of classic and modern
techniques - split screen, electronic colouring, the layering of
Arabic script over the picture - articulates an unspoken commentary
on the fundamental changes over the last 50 years in both artistic
practice and Egypt's socio-political reality.
The effects of war were addressed in a darkened room, in a display
case of the artist's diaries from 1982 (the year of the Israeli
invasion), in which Zaatari noted military movements alongside the
weather and films he had seen. A photo album of snapshots that the
16-year-old shot from his balcony, show massive explosions from
repeated air strikes. Six of these photographs were filmed in
sequence and, together with a recording of F-16s screaming overhead,
the 76-second video This Day June 06, 1982 (2003) gives a short but
startling portrait of a teenager's daily reality.
In This House (2004) does more than metaphorically dig; here the
artist actually burrows into the garden of a private home. Zaatari
discovered that Ali Hashisha, a well-known photojournalist, had
formerly been a freedom fighter with the Democratic Popular Party
and, as the leader of a militia group, had used the house as a
hideout for six years. As Ali explains on camera, in 1992, when the
militias were disbanded, he wrote a letter to the displaced owners of
the house, explaining the group's mission and expressing gratitude
for the `loan', then hid it in the garden encased in a mortar shell.
The film literally unearths this part of both his past and Lebanese
history: images of Ali's press credentials, newspapers with his
photojournalist war images, personal photographic souvenirs from the
front and pictures from his childhood flash past on one side of the
screen, while on the other side a video shows the progress of the
hunt for the letter. While the digging continues, Ali describes how
the white of the building had signified hope, how he tried to
maintain the land despite the constant search for wood, disallowing
the felling of a 25-year-old olive tree because `what kind of human
gesture would that be?'
As the show's title, `Unfolding', suggested, history is always in the
process of being rewritten and, as the letter is finally unearthed,
unfolded and read, the mass of people who had joined the search -
workers, a policeman, the house owner, his wife, and a military
representative (in case the mortar was live) - all come away with a
new view of what had once come to pass. Amanda Coulson
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
March 30 2005
Review: Akram Zaatari
Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany
The first thing encountered was a reading table covered with
publications and rows of postcards showing vintage photographs of
Arab citizens. This was not a cash-strapped institution's hard sell
of exhibition-
related items, but a way of introducing the realm in which Akram
Zaatari works; all the items relate to his ongoing efforts for the
Arab Image Foundation, which he co-founded, dedicated to the
preservation of documents from the Middle East and North Africa.
Zaatari is from Lebanon, a country whose history is marred by both
physical annihilation and memory-related erosion, and his artistic
practice is bound to a concept of salvaging the past, of preserving
documents and collecting stories that contrast with the official
state version of history. `Diversity', he once stated in an
interview, `is the most important factor in resisting collective
misrepresentations [...]. Focusing on individuality thus becomes a
political mission.'
Zaatari's work is indeed political, but not heavy-handed, didactic or
polemical. He creates films that are charming, delicate and intimate,
revealing aspects of his own life and of other people's, illustrating
how broad governmental decisions affect specific personal lives.
Often there is an element of investigation or pursuit, starting with
a premise or a clue, which Zaatari follows to its end, fleshing out a
story, recording his alternative history.
How I Love You (2001) opens with a typed chat-room conversation,
where the artist tries to find gay men - criminals under Lebanese law
- willing to talk on camera about the passions they cannot otherwise
express freely. Zaatari veils their identities not with a clichéd
dark silhouette but with lighting so bright that their features are
bleached out. In Her + Him, Van Leo (2001) a journey is instigated by
a photograph of the narrator's grandmother, posing naked in a
professional studio. The printed signature `Van Leo' leads Zaatari to
Cairo, where the Armenian-Egyptian photographer settled in 1924 and
opened a portrait studio in 1947. The piece weaves the moving colour
portrait of this ageing artist together with his monochrome
portraits. This contrast of images and of classic and modern
techniques - split screen, electronic colouring, the layering of
Arabic script over the picture - articulates an unspoken commentary
on the fundamental changes over the last 50 years in both artistic
practice and Egypt's socio-political reality.
The effects of war were addressed in a darkened room, in a display
case of the artist's diaries from 1982 (the year of the Israeli
invasion), in which Zaatari noted military movements alongside the
weather and films he had seen. A photo album of snapshots that the
16-year-old shot from his balcony, show massive explosions from
repeated air strikes. Six of these photographs were filmed in
sequence and, together with a recording of F-16s screaming overhead,
the 76-second video This Day June 06, 1982 (2003) gives a short but
startling portrait of a teenager's daily reality.
In This House (2004) does more than metaphorically dig; here the
artist actually burrows into the garden of a private home. Zaatari
discovered that Ali Hashisha, a well-known photojournalist, had
formerly been a freedom fighter with the Democratic Popular Party
and, as the leader of a militia group, had used the house as a
hideout for six years. As Ali explains on camera, in 1992, when the
militias were disbanded, he wrote a letter to the displaced owners of
the house, explaining the group's mission and expressing gratitude
for the `loan', then hid it in the garden encased in a mortar shell.
The film literally unearths this part of both his past and Lebanese
history: images of Ali's press credentials, newspapers with his
photojournalist war images, personal photographic souvenirs from the
front and pictures from his childhood flash past on one side of the
screen, while on the other side a video shows the progress of the
hunt for the letter. While the digging continues, Ali describes how
the white of the building had signified hope, how he tried to
maintain the land despite the constant search for wood, disallowing
the felling of a 25-year-old olive tree because `what kind of human
gesture would that be?'
As the show's title, `Unfolding', suggested, history is always in the
process of being rewritten and, as the letter is finally unearthed,
unfolded and read, the mass of people who had joined the search -
workers, a policeman, the house owner, his wife, and a military
representative (in case the mortar was live) - all come away with a
new view of what had once come to pass. Amanda Coulson
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress