The Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) hosted a panel discussion on two current exhibits called Art on a Green Line and All is Well, which highlights Lebanese issues.
This is the first Canadian solo exhibit of Lebanese Akram Zaatari.
The exhibit, which will be at the CUAG until March 29, deals with Zaatari’s representation of the complex history of Lebanon and demonstrates the issues of identity and displacement being dealt with today not only in Lebanon, but among the Lebanese spread out around the world.
The panel was made up of curator Vicky Moufawad-Paul, artists Johnny Alam and Jayce Salloum, and moderator Zainab Amery. Questions were posed by Amery and the artists and curators addressed some of the key themes and topics aroused by Lebanese art.
The exhibit shows unrest and displacement as a key theme felt among the current generation of Lebanese people.
Many claim a loss of memory is the case in Lebanon since the civil wars and the continued disagreement on events and outcomes. Others, such as Johnny Alam, say there is “a forced amnesia, and there is a difference between really forgetting and not wanting to remember.”
He argued “there is not one memory, but collective memory,” instead of a loss of memory.
Zaatari’s work displays a dissection of letter writing that happened in prisons between cellmates and the use of portrait taking and sending between inmates. This work reveals individual realities that existed during the civil wars.
Artist Jayce Salloum urged people to remember “the issues of reconstruction with memory, identity, and narrative” and to understand there are many factors that affect the contraction and recollection of memory, but to not allow this to dismiss the existence of it.
The panel also encouraged the recognition of the power of art as a sense of resistance, as well as social and political activism.
The interest of post-war memories and the inspiration that is found in it was discussed by the panel.
