By Rana Nasser Eddin | Project Member
BAC started the second half of 2022 with several program updates.
Back in May, we launched BAC's Rooftop with a permanent collection of upcycled furniture produced during the Woodworking Workshop for beginners. We later hosted a drawing concert featuring 4 local illustrators and musicians. We also hosted sound artists and DJs on the roof as part of a collaboration with the Cypriot artist-run space, Thkio Ppalies. These events have opened up the space to future collaboration with artists and musicians, along with agricultural and environmental initiatives.
Towards the end of June, we opened two new exhibitions: a group show titled "Fine Print" and a solo show for Omar Mismar titled " Confiscated Imaginaries", with the latter being the artist's first institutional solo-exhibition in Lebanon. In our group exhibition, "Fine Print" is proposed as an operative synecdoche for a rigged economic system, its collapse, and the implications of its so-called recovery. "The Broken Pitcher", a collaborative project by Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou and Peter Eramian, formed the central component of the exhibition, departing from the context of the recent financial meltdown in Cyprus and unraveling its various global threads. "Fine Print "expanded on these themes and motifs with eleven additional artistic contributions, including seven new commissions that more specifically address the financial crisis in Lebanon, its realities, consequences and vernaculars.
"Confiscated Imaginaries" presented Mismar’s recent body of work consisting of a film, a viewing apparatus, and a series of mosaics, which trace layers of displacement from bodies, to property records and cultural heritage; along with the counter acts of preservation which attempt to resist the systemic effacements resulting from the Syrian war. In the face of irreversible destruction, the exhibition proposes that the transmuted forms of homes and heritages in the hands and imaginaries of their caretakers are a witness to their survival. Both shows opened on June 22 with a steady flow of visitors, and will continue until October 1.
Alongside the exhibitions, BAC also hosted a performance titled "Who Killed Youssef Beidas" written by Chyrstele Khodr from June 24 until July 16. “Who killed Youssef Beidas” is an interactive installation that questions the expansion movement of neoliberalism through the cycles of failed love relationships, reflecting on the reality of the financial collapse in Lebanon today by taking as a starting point the circumstances of the downfall of “Intra Bank” in 1966. The performance was a resounding success, and we are likely to have another round of shows in September.
Our Graphic-Designer-in-Residence program is still ongoing. We concluded our work with our first resident, Karim Farah, in June. We are grateful to have spent this time thinking, discussing and producing together, and to have entrusted Karim with the custody of our visual identity. His proposed logo now sits alongside our previous façade signage as well as forthcoming logos by future Graphic-Designers-in-Residence. Our current resident is now Ghiya Haidar. Ghiya is a multi-disciplinary designer from Beirut. Driven by uninhibited curiosity, playfulness and instinct, she creates works that are stripped down to their essence to resonate feelings of rebellion, existentialism and frivolity. Her personal works include social and cultural projects mostly expressed through typography.
Finally, we are now midway through our third issue of our online publication, The Derivative. Our current themes, Fire edited by Rijin Sahakian, Ghost edited Mirene Arsanios, and Human edited by Sumayya Kassamali, have gathered over 15 different writers, 7 artists, and 5 translators to produce this issue. Our readership is also on a steady rise, with numbers in the thousands.
Beirut Art Center has worked incredibly hard to respond ethically, structurally and with playful and urgent imagination to the social and financial collapse in Lebanon. Our programs have consistently attracted crowds and public engagement both in person and on social media, with thousands of visitors and followers to our multiple online platforms and outputs. At a time when opportunities for collective cultural / social life are overburdened by everyday crises, BAC has served as an inclusive gathering space for the most diverse audience we have ever had. We thank you for your support!
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