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.

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