.2009

'A'Salaam Aleykum : Peace Be Upon You'

Fondazione Merz, Turin, Italy
July 28 - August 2, 2009

Opening Night : July 28, 2009

Artist Statement : July 2009

There is a thin line between reality and dream.

The problems with trying to live in a post war city are many. Nothing works the way it should. Not even the people. We live under the threat that at any time, things could flare up again.  We live under the constant humiliation of the horrible things we did to each other only a few years earlier. I remember the stories of the Holiday Inn Hotel. It is one of the highest buildings in Beirut. During the civil war, it was taken over by a militia who found it trendy to throw people off the rooftop and try and shoot them in mid air. Today we stand side by side as we wait in lines to get into nightclubs.

We dance a lot in Beirut.

Dancing, it seems, has become a form of healing. Dancing, it seems, helps us to forget why we turned against each other. As our bodies move together in small dark spaces, we begin to realize that flesh is flesh and we are all the same. As euphoria takes over, we try to forget why we used religion to kill. Why we found each other so different.

I am searching for a God that transcends boundaries.
I invite you to come and dance. To forget what tears us apart and remember what brings us together. To attempt forgiveness.

Welcome. Peace Be Upon You.

A'Salaam Alaykum : Peace Be Upon You
An Interactive Sculptural Installation by Zena el Khalil
With Ayla Hibri

Tuesday, July 28 2009 at 9.30 pm
The event is part of the exhibition METEORITE IN GIARDINO (Meteorite in the Garden)
Maria Centonze, Curator

A’Salaam Alaykum: Peace Be Upon You is the third of the four events that feature in Meteorite in Giardino, a visual arts exhibition curated by Maria Centonze and titled after a work by Mario Merz, dated 1976.
The “basin” outside the Fondazione - which is the space that was used as a container for the tanks of the former heating plant - will host a cycle of installations. Each one will be on show until the following event, with the usual opening hours of the Fondazione, from 11 am to 7 pm.

Through her work, A’Salaam Alaykum: Peace Be Upon You, el Khalil portrays a generation living with war as a constant memory, always aware that it might start again any time, but still longing for peace, hoping to get back to normality.
The installation displays the word “Allah” in Arabic letters: a rotating 4-meter-tall sculpture made of glass mirror tiles that reflect the lights from the spot lights placed on the borders of the Fondazione’s outer basin.

The installation includes a DJ set by Ayla Hibri, who recreates the atmosphere of the Beirut nightclubbing scene, and is completed by a screen projection of images celebrating everyday life in Beirut.
Visitors may take part in the performance, dancing as if they were in a real disco.

The installation is realized in collaboration with the Galerie Tanit in Munich and Beirut.

venerdì 6 novembre
/san Salvario Sound Station/ presenta:
"Strong signals from earth"
con
Diego Borotti, saxofoni e EWI
Paolo Ricca, tastiere
Tarek Awad Alla, percussioni

Queens And Kings

I have been known on many of an occasion to claim that I was Asmahan in a past life.
Well… why not?

As Asmahan, I often felt torn between the two worlds of the East and the West. I sang to build bridges. While the French, British, Germans and Turks fought their wars on our land, I sang about love. To my family, the great warriors who protected the Syrian and Lebanese mountains, I asked them to make peace with me as well as our European guests. The world was changing and we had to adapt. I truly believed that life could exist without turbulence.

These are portraits of men and women, from my past and my present, who have great stories I would like to tell. People who make up the fabric of where I live.

Many of these Queens and Kings have often been the subject of misinterpretation. Have often had their histories misunderstood. Have often been the subjects of stereotyping. Just like me. Just like Asmahan. It is a fact that victors write history, and Lebanon, it seems, has many winners and no collective reality.

What if these people could speak for themselves.

 It could happen in a dingy hotel lobby on tables covered with crushed red velvet. Or a 24-hour Seven Eleven waiting in line to buy sky blue slurpies. Or the steps of New York Public Library or the H&M on Oxford Circus. Or the old Modca Café on Hamra Street in Beirut.

I want to learn how to sing like Asmahan. My great grand aunt. A star of early cinema in Egypt. The Druze princess who was mysteriously assassinated because she lived before her time.

.Ziad (Aggitated Benevolence), 110 x 45 x 15 cm

.Hind The Tame (Having Little To Do With Hind the Wild), 170 x 60 x 24 cm

.Wedad (With A Touch of May), 183 x 50 x 20 cm

.2007
"between the traffic and the barbed wire, there is very little room to breathe"
A mixed media site specific installation in two parts, The Dialogpunkt Deutsch, Tripoli, Lebanon, April 2007.

I have been thinking lately about how my space around me is so constricted.
I can't move, think or breathe.
This is the result of all the traffic caused by the protestors downtown and the re-building of roads and bridges (from last summer's war). I have also been worried about how civilians are arming themselves once again. Almost everyone is buying a gun, and this hasn't happened since the civil war!
Everywhere I look now, it's barbed wire and guns. I have never seen so much barbed wire before in Beirut. This silver wire is eating away my city trying to create fear as it imposes itself on the roads I drive on.
Between the traffic and the barbed wire, there is very little room to breathe.

.2006
"love is all you need."
A mixed media site specific installation, Espace SD, Beirut, Lebanon, May 2006.

this installation has its roots in the riots that occurred this year in arab countries, due to the cartoon in danish newspapers depicting the prophet mohammad.
i began to think about imagery in religion and how delicate the process is in the visual interpretation of faith, god, absolution, etc.
for inspiration, i turned to, what is in my opinion, the most beautiful sculpture ever created; michelangelo's pieta. this sculpture is the most intimate and passionate work depicting a religious account. it is a visual history. i pondered about the beauty of the marble, the contours of the body of christ, the expression on mary's face and the love radiating. such a moment captured is priceless. jesus christ is at his weakest moment, and there is his mother to hold him and care for his body, as he breathes out his last few breaths of life. this along with other sculptures, paintings, church murals, and scripture is what helped spread the faith of christianity and make it a permanent religion.

i wondered about sitt zainab and how she must have felt when she retrieved the body of her brother hussein after his brutal decapitation. it is shia tradition that the story be passed down by word and prayer; a verbal history. the story, lamented and symbolically re-enacted is what has helped preserve the most important event of shia history. telling the story by word of mouth and symbolic actions turned it into an esoteric experience, rather than a clear cut physical and visual one.
thinking about sitt zainab and the pain involved in losing a loved one, i thought about all mothers and sisters... and i found myself wondering why we have to lose our children, lovers and friends to preserve our specific interpretation of the name of god. why do we find ourselves killing for god?

i believe that there are many aspects of the civil war that are still unresolved. in some ways, it is still raging... people are still angry, insecure and afraid. there are hundreds of thousands of deaths that have not been acknowledged. there are thousands of people who disappeared and are still "missing". there are militiamen who are now democratic politicians with blood on their hands. these ironies are a few of the many underlining ideas in my work presented here.
we still do not have a war memorial in lebanon. this installation is both a memorial and a shrine. here, i have put myself in everyone's shoes... mothers and fathers who lost their children, the masses who lost their mentors, religion that lost its faith to politics and subsequently had it's faith replaced by power and greed. i have walked back in time, and i have dug up the present. i have created a time space conundrum.
what you see here is what i see on my everyday walks through the streets of beirut. there are no hierarchies... simply threads of ideas, memories, and perceptions. there are ghosts, unresolved love, women in black, men in pink, little corner shops, leftover militia insignia, crackling spray paint, and multi colored lights. lots and lots of multi colored lights.

what is it about mankind that seeks out violence? has religion always been about power and greed?
why can't we just take off our shoes and dance under what should be the glorious light of god. she is a great companion once you get to know her.

"all you need is love, love is all you need." in short, i love you. i love each and every one of you.

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