The Days of the Blue Bat Exhibition at Agial Art Gallery

The Agial Art Gallery will be hosting an exhibition called “The Days of the Blue Bat” which will feature a multimedia installation and objects created by Salah Saouli.

The year 1958 in Lebanon was marked by a crisis that lasted six months and made the deep going rifts in the society clear. The regional geopolitical situation and its players influenced the situation strongly, including the landing of 14,000 US-marines on the coast of Beirut: “Operation Blue Bat” was intended to curb the alleged communist threat to regional stability. This period was defined as either “Revolution of 58”, “Violence of 58”, “Unrest”, or “Insurrection”,followed by the “Counter-revolution”, depending on the affiliations of the narrator.

Different social and political aspects led to a general chaos, in many locations of the country an armed struggle took place, where members of the community of several quarters of the city of Beirut armed themselves and descended into the streets and built barricades. What followed was a period of militant euphoria and intoxication, each decision maker in the conflict had his own goals and visions and fought his own war, regardless of the consequences.

The exhibition “The Days of the Blue Bat” explores a period of recent Lebanese history that remains largely unexamined. It presents different figures, actors and witnesses of this crisis.