Monumental Sculpture & Installation – Lebanese Artists Working With Junk

The platform presents four artists who take back objects from our consumer society and turn them into relics and powerful symbols.

They create works of true aesthetic appeal by retrieving and “reassembling” fragments of everyday objects, scraps, pieces of furniture, wood and iron which some-times become unrecognizable under layers of paint. By using these various materials, the artists are mainly tackling the ecological problem.

Abdulrahman Katanani “After six days and we will be back, Inshallah”, mixed media, 2011, Courtesy Agial Art gallery
Born and bred in Shatila refugee camp in 1983, Abdulrahman Katanani is a young Palestinian artist whose work is noted for its intensity in portraying a vivid recollection of stories amassed throughout the years that initially depict the tragedy and hardships endured at the camp. Through his work, he is delivering the camp’s message of resistance and endurance using tools from the camp that resonate happiness, apathy, empathy, tears and joy. His creativity is exemplified in his paintings representing a deeply felt compassion, dramatic and lively devoid of any rigidity.

Samir Khaddaje, Untitled, 2011, Courtesy Galerie Janine Rubeiz
Ruin, desolation and alienation of man offered in the light. Mutilated bodies, and is believed to Beirut. Again, perhaps not enough. Beirut, like the world is a mutilated body. Body that we operate to remove all traces of the past. In order not see more, to forget. But from the memory of the artist, this vision emerges that everybody wants to avoid. There is here a cry of memory wich that wants to remind us of our reality.

Mario Saba, “The temple” (From the concept utopia/ the Babylon syndrome), 2010, Courtesy Galerie épreuve d’artiste
Mario Saba is influenced by the passing time and its way of putting real and virtual traces in our memories as well physical traces on the surrounding we live in. The temple draws its inspiration from the symbols, signs, equation, or musical notes…

Anita Toutikian, “Damnesia”, Installation, 2011, Courtesy of the artist
Damnesia is an emotional behavioral disorder, whereby something very bad has happened to an individual or a group of people who cannot remember what happened. They just carry the pain, guilt, shame and the rage, and they express it in unusual ways, at unexpected times and at in least likely of situations. Damnesia is also a very bad thing a perpetrator exercises on a victim and totally forgets about it. Sometimes victims of Damnesia end up as perpetrators.