Little Stories, Big Picture Illustrating with words, describing with photographs.

The architect’s apparatus

Bernard Khoury is perhaps the most internationally acclaimed architect currently working in Lebanon, and he has produced some of the few icons of post-war design in Lebanon.  Khoury’s most feted buildings, the Gemmayzeh restaurant Centrale and the Karantina night club BO18, are critiques, with Centrale riffing off quaint notions of preserving Beirut’s architectural heritage, while BO18 confronts the legacy of the civil war directly though its location on the site of a famous massacre and by employing coffins as its central motif. Those buildings made Khoury an international star, but they also helped pigeonhole Lebanese contemporary art in the eyes of foreigners, who seemed to say, “If it’s not about the war, we’re not interested.”  In his exhibit at the Beirut Art Center, Khoury attempts to take the ax to that somewhat-debilitating association.

“Prisoner of War”, described in the catalogue as an “apparatus”, is a man-sized sculpture that resembles a miniature version of an iconic and sinister-looking American stealth bomber, without the wings.  It sits on the floor bathed in light. Behind it, a video of the sculpture in motion plays on the wall.

The captions for the work, under the faux-militaristic heading “Concept of Operation”, reads: “The POW is a self-propelled apparatus for the use of returning Prisoners of War to enemy lines.” The screen behind the sculpture plays a video of this journey from the two cameras fitted in the front windows of the apparatus. The two feeds, much like two eyes, show a ground-level view as a POW shuffles over rubble to commands of “Straight! Right! Left!” being shouted in Arabic.

The sculpture on the floor at BAC is empty, but the video and the description create for the viewer an understanding that is based on its imagined use. There is no view out, so as “prisoners” return across enemy lines, they are forced to act as an intelligence-collecting tool: the ultimate Trojan Horses. The prisoner always remains blind to, yet protected from, his surroundings.

On their own, Khoury’s apparatus and video – which were designed for a different exhibition in Italy – are perplexing. It is only in the third piece, “Catherine Wants to Know”, which Khoury designed especially for the current exhibit, that the thrust of his message becomes apparent. The photomontage consists of images of the civil war by well-known Lebanese artists. We see the Cedars in snow with skiing soldiers floating down the slopes, the mountains and the city in war, soldiers by the sea, a military jeep, painted colored balloons, Khoury’s own BO18, children by the beach, and, finally, the POW sculpture in use with human arms emerging from under it – a landscape of the war. The cumulative effect is to elucidate and mock the plight of the contemporary Lebanese artist, trapped in a cycle of endless reference to the civil war.

The artist’s answer

At first glance Akram Zaatari would seem to be just the sort of artist Khoury is critiquing in “Catherine Wants to Know”. Indeed, Google Zataari’s name and the first hit describes him as “exploring Lebanon's postwar condition through collecting testimonies and various documents…”

Zaatari’s focus on a Lebanese prisoner of Israel would seem to be subscribing to the dichotomy Khoury mocks; that Lebanese artists must address the war in some manner or another unless they want to be ignored. But by taking an almost microscopic focus to the experiences of a single individual, Zaatari’s “Earth of Endless Secrets: Writing for a Posterior Time” transcends the conflict itself.

The exhibit, the other half of which is featured at Sfeir-Semler Gallery, is a photographed correspondence of a single prisoner, Nabih Awada, a former member of the Communist resistance in Lebanon. Nawada was first imprisoned by Israel when he was 16 and didn’t regain his freedom until a decade later.

“Secrets” consists of two series of photographed documents: “Neruda’s Garden”, which features images of Awada’s letters to his family and theirs to him; and “Untold”, which features Awada’s correspondence with his fellow prisoners and a video.

In one sense the work has a documentary interest independent of its artistic merits. For instance, in the “Untold” video, Awada writes a letter to Samir Kantar, the most infamous of the Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, which he put into a capsule, making reference to the way in which secret messages were passed through furtive prison kisses. Also in “Untold”, 48 photographs of prisoners with notes scribbled on back are displayed, showcasing correspondences from prisoners to Awada, or “Neruda”, his revolutionary nickname.

While many of the messages displayed reflect the emotions we associate with detention, namely boredom and misery, others are unexpectedly comical: “Comrade Nabih… A revolutionary greeting… I offer you this portrait of me… I ask you to accept this one even if it’s ugly… If you like it, then welcome. Otherwise, goodbye… Finally, please accept my cold salutations, kneaded in a mountain of ice. Peace, Ali Balhas, Askalan Prison, July 21, 1995.”

The photo-notes were permitted only after a 1993 hunger strike forced the hand of the Israeli captors, and there is a certain irony in the notion that a decision by a random Israeli bureaucrat is partly responsible for the window into the world of resistance prisoners of Israel that Zaatari has put together.

The most affecting images are in “Neruda’s Garden”. Written on Red Cross stationery—prisoners are warned in bold letters at the top of each page not to discuss anything other than personal family matters—Awada’s letters to his mother are tender and meticulously illustrated.

In addition, Zaatari features two large photos of the collected correspondences, from both sides of the divide. In the photo, his mother’s worn satchel holds his letters from prison, but the viewer notices the care with which the notes are folded and meticulously organized. Like the folder Awada created to hold his mother’s letters, her satchel and the thoughts it contained were the one connection she had to him, and so she cared for it in his absence, endowing it and its contents with his missing personality.

“Secrets” draw attention away from the loud, postwar hysteria to the silent little economy of emotions that persists in spite the best efforts of his jailors. By focusing on unadorned evidence, Zaatari creates a work that is more interested in the human condition in captivity than any broader political argument.

This article was published on July 28, 2009 at NOW Lebanon.