INSTALLATIONS

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Phone Cover Art

Phone Cover Art is ‘a serial work about the “images of war”, based on conflicts. I started this work in Lebanon in 2016, when the threat and insecurity that comes from the current turmoil there was just beginning. Upon returning to my country of Lebanon, I could hear an internal struggle- a virtual warning of danger propagated through digital devices such as smartphones and computers.  Today, through social networks and other digital platforms we receive photos of death, shocking news, children dying in the sea, the images of destroyed cities in Syria, executions… While, on the other hand, you can find portraits of Joseph Beuys or Gauguin, or read poetic writings…

This flow of information is uncontrollable– fast, flowing like a stream– where even death is a manipulated image. To focus the viewer’s attention on these news stories and help them reflect upon the information that is received through the use of this technology, I wanted to take a picture in time of each of these news stories and copy them, without changing the title or the text, in a sequence of reproductions.  The work brings into question concepts of human dignity and personal rights, which are being annihilated, thrown into movement and propagated to everyone.

The work is connected to the concept of marketing by using the format of a ‘phone cover store’. Each phone cover is signed on the back and has a serial number, but instead of buying a phone accessory, the viewer is engage in an argument about the news we receive in our warm hands and on the loss of humanity.

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Eternalize Autumn

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An Eye for an Eye, Nature for Nature

Ten windows salvaged from my old house are transformed into a transparent house to hide my view of the world and protect myself behind their closed frames.
How does your gaze move within your home or outside through its windows? Humans are the people of shadows who build walls to create intimacy, closing themselves behind sandbags, as during a war, and setting up boundaries to divide their territory from others.
Here only on the transparent part of the home has been used: the eye– as it looks through the windows– dreams, creating a voyage inside the house– watching the sunset, the people on the street, the lives and the events of the ever-changing natural world, the rain– all behind all the security of closed windows.

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The fall of the Umbilical Cord

A new return to nature at the moment of birth begins with the separation of the child from the mother, symbolized by the flow of the waterfall on this site. The umbilical chord is attached to rocks, static ground, and trees, which rise toward the sky; it is a conflict between the secular and the spiritual.

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Breathing Distant Ground

This installation begins with a gesture, where the viewer is asked to participate with the art by pouring a small bag of earth from Lebanon’s cedar forest into a small vessel and to ‘travel’ there through the sense of smell.
Breathing a distant land full of incense recalls to mind one’s origins, roots and innocent memories of childhood.

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August 2006

The potential of this artwork lives in the representation of the sequence of historical events, involving a troubled history of war with the symbolism of these stones used as relics.
The stones are also the memories of people and children who died as martyrs in the war (see tragical events of July 2006 in Lebanon), with the desire to preserve these people and their memories with stones. A photo of the war in Lebanon was placed behind a window, as if one were looking out upon this tragic scene from one’s own location. A series of rocks are placed in jars in front of the window, as if they were relics. The stones collected were taken from the riverbanks of various Italian rivers, and evoke a sense of destruction.

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Khadisha Valley

This work recalls my hometown valley, the valley of Kadisha. The valley extends up into the mountains, with its head a vertical line extending into the cosmos and at its base digging in the depths of the sacred place. Smelling of incense and prayers, one is brought to contemplate the majesty of shapes and lines that create this valley, where every sound is left dominating over the eternal silence at the center of Earth.
A veil of fine and transparent tulle represents the fog which characterizes this valley, and calls for a return to modesty, virtue and mysticism as it casts a ‘mosquito net’ to protect children in their cradles.

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Adonis Spring of Nature

The rebirth of the forest, even in the plains, is symbolic of the crucifixion and resurrection of nature.
The caves, caved in wood, reproduced in small dimensions compared to the natural size familiar to humans– smaller than the oldest shrines of humanity– are a symbol of the womb. The Arabic verses engraved using a pyrograph are taken from one of my poems.

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