Afterimage Exhibition at Ayyam Gallery

The Ayyam Gallery is hosting a solo exhibition by Ginane Makki Bacho called “Afterimage”. “Afterimage” presents a highly personal series of paintings which Makki Bacho refers to as her ‘memoirs’. Having trained as a writer before attending art school, narrative is central to her artistic practice.

Working from personal photos collaged together to create ‘flashes’ of her past that overlap and merge, the paintings allow the viewer glimpses into Makki Bacho’s history set against a wider narrative of the changing face of Lebanon; the viewer shares in her intimate memories, but also the pain of a country torn apart.

Through working from photographs, the artist invokes the language of the personal snapshot, and the universality of this – the shared experience of attempting to capture a fleeting moment through a photographic token, or adopting a conventional pose. At the same time, her muted pastel palette is evocative of old and faded family albums, creating a sense of nostalgia within her compositions.

When war broke out in Beirut in 1982, Makki Bacho’s apartment was completely destroyed by a shell. As she sifted through the rubble, she collected twisted shrapnel that she would later use to make sculptures and this cathartic act became her process for dealing with the trauma and shock of such an attack. Though working with two-dimensional media for this new series of works, the artist is still fascinated with building layers and textures in order to construct a complex narrative, which is also informed by her extensive work with printmaking.