Radical: 10-Day Arts Exhibition

Haven for Artists in collaboration with the Institut français du Liban is organising & hosting Radical: a 10-day arts fair and gathering.

Radical intends to question the personifications of common understanding or subjection and inspect the extremes that exist in identity, gender, self annihilation, freewill and self realization within urbanization. Radical is a program of ongoing exhibitions, screenings, performances and concerts. Extremes are a definitive part of Middle-Eastern culture and politics, which has led to unwritten, yet abided-by laws, or understanding of the singular within the whole. While Church and State have yet to host their speeches in different forums, artists must examine that which has already been categorized by constantly questioning its merits, validity and purpose, and to seek the core of its limitations.

The ways that we behave and express ourselves are shaped by the cultures in which we participate. Since the mid-Twentieth century, philosophers, social scientists, and historians have theorised that the roles, characteristics, and activities which define our thoughts and choices are not innate, but rather socially constructed. Behaviours thought to be opposing extremes differ from one culture to another and across time periods.

Radical will bring together artists who will examine, question, and criticise the extremities of the human psyche and the many vulnerable or understated struggles and/or oppressions that are associated and bred into normalcy.

Radical hopes to elaborate the extremes so that we may seek a common ground in a comprehensive exhibition which highlights the outer-most-bounds. Through this, we hope to present an examination on how individuals are socially inclined to extremes, often as a consequence of choice that is driven by a social convention. We hope to entice a certain curiosity which questions the grounds on which certain misconceptions and categorisations have persisted. Artists will open a new world of inner inspection that aims to illuminate the many layers of the human social condition. The extremes will be that of a spectrum; one that aims to highlight the negative, the positive and the lacking, in order to reach a higher understanding of the consequential.