Ricardo Mbarkho

Born in Beirut in 1974, Ricardo Mbarkho is an artist and lecturer living in Lebanon.

In his recent works, Ricardo Mbarkho reflects on various text-based documents by transposing them into alternative interpretations via digital images. Mbarkho’s work embodies rational and emotional aspects at once. His digital images are made from texts. In order to obtain these images, the artist uses the computer as a tool to convert files containing texts into image files. By this process, the text’s binary codes, which are the digits that computers use to stock information, generate a unique corresponding image. Therefore, the digital images of Ricardo Mbarkho become a visual equivalent of the initial texts. These are sometimes written by the artist himself specially for the visual work, as it could be a pre-existing text he has chosen. The colored pixels of his digital images have an added value, which is the meaning of the text behind each pixel. With this technique, the artist investigates multiple questions related to language, communication, and creative industries issues within the sociopolitical sphere : Digital Visuals from Lebanon (digital images, 2008); Visualizing Communication (digital images, 2008); Biblical Themes (digital images, 2010); The Space series (digital images, 2011).

Ricardo Mbarkho has been using multiple mediums to reflect on (un) communicational situations: Each one has from art what art has from itself (human connections, since 1999); Gare de Lyon – Juvisy (video, 1999); CONNECTED (website, 2003). In his aesthetic approach, he questions a society where the breakdown of social cohabitation is preciously maintained and frozen into a continuous struggle over power and belonging: Lebanese National Tabbouleh Day (celebration, since 2001); Arameans (video, 2007); Grading the Lebanese Constitution (website, 2011).

His work was presented in many countries (among which: Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates). In November 2010, he received the prize of the Lebanese Ministry of Culture for the Contemporary Arts in the Visual Art Forum 2010.

Ricardo Mbarkho received his Art Diplomas from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and Ecole Supérieure d’Etudes Cinématographiques, Paris, France and from Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Beirut. He also completed an exchange study program at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He is currently teaching art at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Beirut.

Photos Available