October 21.09 - January 16.10
Opening reception: Tuesday October 20, from 6pm to 9pm
Naji Al-Ali Untitled. Ayreen Anastas & René Gabri case sensitive america. Ziad Antar New York Perimé. Joseph Beuys I like America and America likes Me. Wafaa Bilal The Night of Bush Capturing: Virtual Jihadi. William Eggleston Dust Bells 1. Mounir Fatmi Out of History. Jenny Holzer Handprint. An-My Lê Events Ashore. Matt McCormick future so bright: Motor Hotel. Julia Meltzer & David Thorne In Possession of a Picture. Melik Ohanian Invisible Film. Catherine Opie Untitled (Wall Street). Greta Pratt Using History. Martha Rosler If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be 'DISINFORMATION'. Kara Walker "Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions". |
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  About the exhibition |
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Beirut Art Center’s exhibition America is an attempt to question the United States of America a possible model of civilization. What does “America” mean in our collective unconscious?
Certainly, America is a superpower and occupies a predominant position in the world. Its actions and its policies consistently demand that others position themselves in relation to them, whether in agreement, opposition or somewhere in between, stirring as much feelings of fascination and respect as exasperation and resentment.
As this is especially true in our region, where America’s policies and strategies have often been divisive and destabilizing, we believe it is relevant to take a closer look at the physical and mental territory named America through an exhibition and a series of events.
Neither an accusation nor a celebration, the purpose of the exhibition is to reflect on the mythologies that have built and perpetuated the idea of America and to consider the ways in which America has been both imagined and imaged by Americans and non-Americans alike.
The exhibition features sixteen works by artists of different nationalities and backgrounds, living inside and outside of the United States.
Whether they focus on people, urban environment or natural landscape, whether they dwell on pivotal historical moments or mundane ones, all these works reflect on aspects of American cultural, social and political life that have become of universal relevance.
with the support of:
Heinrich Böll Foundation
Ford Foundation
GIFCO - Ghorayeb International Freight for Order
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Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri
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Julia Meltzer & David Thorne
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| Biography |
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| NAJI AL-ALI
Naji Al-Ali (c1937–1987) was born in the Palestinian village of Ash-Shajara, between Nazareth and Tiberias. In 1948, Ash-Shajara was one of the 480 villages destroyed in what is known as the “Nakba.” Al-Ali, 11 years of age at the time, was expelled from Palestine along with his family. Naji Al-Ali grew up in the Ein Al-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, where his gift for drawing was discovered by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani in the late 1950s. Early the following decade he left for Kuwait, embarking on a thirty-year career that would see his cartoons published daily in newspapers from Cairo and Beirut to Paris and London. Al-Ali worked for, among others, the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir and the independent Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas. Constantly harassed and censored, Naji al-Ali moved to London, where he was shot and killed in Chelsea on July 22, 1987. Naji Al-Ali was posthumously awarded the Golden Pen Award of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ).
AYREEN ANASTAS & RENE GABRI
Ayreen Anastas writes in fragments and makes films and videos. Her work has been shown internationally in festivals, museums and cinemas but not yet broadcast on television. Her primary interests include almost everything becoming. She often wonders: how is it that Everything Continues as Before?
René Gabri is an artist learned in the fine art of non-specialization. He is often working alone or with others within the folds of cultural practice, social thought, and politics.
ZIAD ANTAR
Ziad Antar lives and works between Saida (Lebanon) and Paris (France). He graduated with a degree in agricultural engineering in 2001, and has been working in photography and video since 2002. He completed a one-year residency at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2003 and a one-year residency at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Videos include Tokyo Tonight (2003), WA (2004), Tambourro (2004), Safe Sound (2006), Tank You (2006), Marche Turque (2007), and Mdardara (2007). He directed his first documentary in 2002 on the French photographer Jean-Luc Moulène, and has since made several documentaries for the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya, including L'Islam et la laïcité (2004), Lebanon and its Partners (2005), and The Role of Europe (2007).
JOSEPH BEUYS
Joseph Beuys (*May 12, 1921 in Krefeld, † January 23, 1986 in Düsseldorf) was an artist who used the media of drawing, sculpture, objects and installation as well as action and performance. His comprehensive opus comprises works in a more traditional artistic sense, but above all socio-political activities and happenings.
Serving in the air force during the Second World War, he began to study sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1946. One year later he transferred to the class of Ewald Mataré and became his master student in 1951. In 1961 Beuys was appointed professor of sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He was dismissed in 1972 mainly because of his political activities as co-founder of the Deutsche Studentenpartei (1967) and the Organization for Direct Democracy (1970).
Following his encounter with Nam June Paik and George Maciunas in 1962, Beuys devoted himself more and more to the Fluxus movement and accomplished many of his actions in the 1960s. In terms of content, he therewith pursued an amelioration of the traditional concept of art to the point of a social and anthropological understanding of it. The materials Beuys used – fat, felt, copper, and honey – reflect his concept of polar basic principles, for example heat and cold.
WAFAA BILAL
Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, a professor at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, has been widely recognized for his interactive and dynamic Internet encounters. His installation "Domestic Tension" placed him in front of a paintball gun which people could shoot at him over the internet, 24 hours a day for a month. Newsweek called it "breathtaking." The month- long piece spurred online debates and intense conversations, garnering the praise of the Chicago Tribune, which called it "one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time" and named him Artist of the Year in 2007. In fall 2008, City Lights published "Shoot an Iraqi: Life, Art and Resistance Under the Gun," about Bilal's life and the Domestic Tension project. Most recently Bilal was named one of the year's "15 Most Politically Fascinating People of 2008" by the online magazine GamePolitics.com.
WILLIAM EGGLESTON
William Eggleston describes his selection of subjects as “democratic.” He trains his lens on banal things, such as the red ceiling in the guest room of a friend’s house. The thousands of photographs Eggleston has shot over the years form an eccentric, aggregate portrait of Memphis, Tennessee, and the Mississippi Delta. Working primarily with dye-transfer prints, a technique of printing color photographs that yields pure and intense color, Eggleston records this world, not in muted shades of black and white, but in raw, sometimes garish hues. In 1976, Eggleston was the subject of the first exhibition of color photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition gave a new artistic legitimacy to color photography, which until then had been deemed suitable only for advertising and commercial work. Eggleston has exhibited widely including solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2008); the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2007); the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2003); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); the Fondation Cartier, Paris (2001); the Hasselblad Center, Göteborg, Sweden (1999); the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen (1992); and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC (1990). His work is represented in many American and international collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Santa Monica; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Eggleston’s work has been published in numerous monographs including William Eggleston’s Guide (Museum of Modern Art 1976), The Democratic Forest (Secker & Warburg 1989), Ancient and Modern (Random House 1992), 2 ¼ (Twin Palms 1999), Los Alamos (Scalo 2003) and 5x7 (Twin Palms 2006). He was the subject of a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2008 which will travel to the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
MOUNIR FATMI
mounir fatmi constructs visual spaces and linguistic games that aim to free viewers from their preconceptions about politics and religion, and allow them to contemplate these and other subjects in new ways. His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires; they directly address the current events of our world, and serve to both clarify the origins and symptoms of global issues as well as speak to those whose lives are affected by specific events.
mounir fatmi's work has been exhibited in the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland, the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
fatmi recently participated in the Gwangju Biennial, Korea, and the 2nd Seville Biennial, Spain. In 2006, he was awarded the Grand Prize at the 7th Dakar Biennial and the Uriot Prize by the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.
mounir fatmi’s work was also included in the 1st Luanda Triennial in Angola, the 8th Sharjah Biennial and the 52nd Biennial of Venice in 2007.
In 2008, he was part of the program Paradise Now! Essential French Avant-Garde Cinema 1890-2008 at the Tate Modern in London. He also participated in the exhibition Flow at the Studio Museum Harlem in New York and the exhibition Traces du Sacré at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
fatmi is currently taking part in the 10th Lyon Biennial.
JENNY HOLZER
For over thirty years, Jenny Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions, including 7 World Trade Center, the Reichstag, the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her medium, whether formulated as a T-shirt, as a plaque, or as an LED sign, is writing, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work. Starting in the 1970s with the New York City posters, and up to her recent light projections on landscape and architecture, her practice has rivaled ignorance and violence with humor, kindness, and moral courage. Holzer received the Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and the Public Art Network Award in 2004. She holds honorary degrees from Ohio University, Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Smith College. Holzer lives and works in New York.
AN-MY LE
Born in Saigon in 1960, An-My Lê came to the United States as a political refugee in 1975.
In 1993 she completed an MFA in Photography at Yale University. Between 1994 and 1998 she made several trips back to Vietnam to discover and photograph her native country in peacetime. Since 1999 An-My Lê has explored the military conflicts that have framed the last half-century of American history: the war in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. The artist approaches these events obliquely. Instead of addressing her subject by creating reportage images of actual events, she photographs places where war is psychologically anticipated, processed, and relived: Vietnam War re-enactments in Virginia and North Carolina; the US Marines’ training in the “virtual” Afghanistan and Iraq of the Californian desert.
An-My Lê’s solo exhibitions include New Photography 13, MoMA, New York; Small Wars, PS1/MOMA Contemporary Art Center. Since 2006 a traveling solo exhibition, Small Wars: Photographs by An-My Lê, has been shown at RISD Museum, Providence; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK, the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; SF MoMA, San Francisco; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Johnson Museum, Cornell University; and Boise Art Museum, Idaho. From September 2006 to September 2008 her series, Trap Rock, was on view at Dia: Beacon. A large group of her series Events Ashore was shown in 2008 in On the Subject of War at the Barbican Art Gallery, London.
MATT MCCORMICK
Matt McCormick is an artist and filmmaker who has made several award winning short films in recent years. McCormick's work has screened in film festivals, art museums, and microcinemas around the globe, and appeared on MTV and the Sundance Channel. His work has received positive reviews from Artforum, The New York Times, and Film Comment magazine. McCormick has worked and collaborated with many artists and musicians, including The Shins, Miranda July, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, and Calvin Johnson. McCormick has had three films screen at the Sundance Film Festival, and been included in the traveling group exhibitions “Uncertain States of America” and “Baja to Vancouver.” He has received awards including Best Short Film from the San Francisco International Film Fest, Best Experimental from the New York Underground Film Fest, and Best Short from the Ann Arbor Film Fest. His film ‘The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal’ was named as a ‘Top 10 Film of 2002’ by both The Village Voice and Artforum magazine. Currently, McCormick is putting the final touches on his first feature film Some Days Are Better Than Others.
JULIA MELTZER & DAVID THORNE
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne produce videos, photographs, installations, and published texts. From 1999 to 2003, their projects centered on secrecy, history, and memory. Current works focus on language, faith, and the idea of the future.
Recent projects have been exhibited at Modern Art Oxford, Steve Turner Contemporary (Los Angeles), PhotoCairo 4, Casino Luxembourg, the Walraff-Richartz Museum (Köln), Argos Center for Art and Media (Brussels), the Wexner Center (Columbus, Ohio), the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the 2006 California Biennial, Akbank Sanat Gallery (Istanbul), Apex Art (New York), and as part of the Hayward Gallery’s (London) travelling exhibition program. Video work has been screened at Homeworks IV (Beirut), the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Video Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among many others.
Julia Meltzer is an artist and director of Clockshop. Her work takes up subjects ranging from the bureaucracy of secrecy to contemporary politics in the Middle East. She has taught at Hampshire College and UC Irvine. She received her BA from Brown University and her MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a recipient of grants from Art Matters, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship Fund. Julia was a Fulbright Fellow in Damascus, Syria in 2005–6 and is a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009-10.
David is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, a 2007 recipient of an Art Matters grant and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial award, and a 2004 recipient of a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship. He completed his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio at the University of California, Los Angeles in
2004. In spring 2006 David was a visiting artist at The Cooper Union in New York City. From 2005–2007 he collaborated with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, and Katya Sander on the project “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” for documenta 12.
MELIK OHANIAN
Melik Ohanian was born in France in 1969. He lives and works in Paris and New York. His work has been shown in many solo exhibitions including: Galerie Chantal Crousel and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, South London Gallery in London, De Appel in Amsterdam, IAC in Villeurbanne, Yvon Lambert in New York, Museum in Progress in Vienna, and Matucana 100 in Santiago de Chile. He has also taken part in a large number of group exhibitions around the world, in particular the Sao Paulo biennial (representing France), the Berlin and Sydney biennials in 2004, the Moscow and Lyon biennials in 2005 and the Gwangju and Seville biennials in 2006. Most recently his work was on display at the 52nd edition of the Venice Biennial in 2007.
Melik Ohanian’s work can be understood in terms of physical and conceptual territories that focus on the concept of time. Drawing on research and scientific and philosophical methodology he has developed a body of work that uses a wide range of mediums. His installations examine the operative mode of the exhibition and extend beyond the usual boundaries of images, in their spatial and temporal dimensions. By placing the viewer in an exploratory role, the artist highlights the complexity of temporal intervals, which, in more or less obvious ways, govern our relationship to the world and others.
CATHERINE OPIE
Catherine Opie lives and works in Los Angeles. She was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, and an MFA from CalArts in 1988. In 2000, Opie was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Yale University, and in 2001 she accepted the position of Professor of Photography at UCLA.
Catherine Opie's photographs include series of portraits and American urban landscapes, ranging in format from large-scale color works to smaller black and white prints. Moving from the territory of the body to the framework of the city, Opie's various photographic series are linked together by a conceptual framework of cultural portraiture.
Catherine Opie has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. In 2008, a mid-career survey of her work, entitled, “Catherine Opie: American Photographer,” was on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Recent solo exhibitions have been organized by the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The Saint Louis Art Museum, the Photographers’ Gallery in London, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
GRETA PRATT
Greta Pratt is the author of two monographs, Using History (Steidl 2005), and In Search of the Corn Queen (Smithsonian American Art Museum 1994.) Pratt’s works are represented in major public and private collections, including The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Pratt was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, served as photography bureau chief of Reuters International in New York City, and her photographs have been featured in The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. Pratt is a recipient of New Jersey State Council on the Arts Artist Fellowship and is a professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia USA.
MARTHA ROSLER
Martha Rosler has been an important figure in art since the 1960’s, contributing groundbreaking works in media including video, photography, installation, performance, photo-text and critical writing. Her work addresses social life and the public sphere, often staking out feminist and anti-war positions. Her work in the public sphere ranges from everyday life - often with an eye to women's experience - and the media to architecture and the built environment.
She has been included in numerous international exhibitions, most recently WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, PS1 in Queens, and other venues, UnMonumental at The New Museum in New York, Documenta 12 and Skulptur Projekte Münster, all in 2007; and Ambitions d’Art at Institut d’Art Contemporain in Villeurbanne, France, in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions have included La Casa, La Calle, La Cocina at the Centro Jose Guerrero in Granada, Spain; location, location, location at Portikus in Frankfurt; GREAT POWER at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY; and Bringing the War Home at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts in 2007.
A retrospective of Rosler’s work was shown in five European cities and in New York at the New Museum and the International Center of Photography in 1998-2000. She has published several books of photographs, texts, and commentary on public space, ranging from airports and roads to housing and homelessness. Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975-2001, a book of Rosler’s essays, was published by the MIT Press in 2004 (reprinted, 2008). She has lectured extensively nationally and internationally.
Martha Rosler was born in Brooklyn, where she lives and works. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. from Brooklyn College. Her work is in the collections of major international museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Generali Foundation in Vienna, among many others.
KARA WALKER
Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California, and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Walker has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions. Her recent solo museum shows include "Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love," which traveled to: The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, ARC/ Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth and a solo show at CAC Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain. She also participated in the 52nd Venice Biennale, in June of 2007. She was the recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997, the Deutsche Bank Prize in 2000, United States Artists Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008, and the United States representative to the 25th International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 2002. Her work is included in numerous museums and public collections including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Tate Gallery, London, the Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee, Rome, and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt. She lives and works in New York City.
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