Lamia Joreige - Uncertain Times: Past

The exhibition Uncertain Times involves the research, writing and production of a body of work covering the period between the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the French and English mandate in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine (-1914 1920). The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, as well as the First World War and the famine of Mount Lebanon, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, led to a geographic, social and political transformation of this region, and had major consequences that still impact our lives today.

It is precisely today’s feeling of anxiety and uncertainty in our region, which triggered the artist’s interest in looking back at this turning point in history — a moment of rupture, of fragmentation and creation at once.

Lamia Joreige’s work on the Lebanese Wars (1990-1975) and the post-war period in Beirut, was the beginning of a reflection on history and its possible narratives. In this project, she extended her research to a more distant period of our history, of which we have no direct experience but that nevertheless still affect our present.

While the artist highlights some historical events, her aim is not to produce a historical account in itself, but rather to draw a reflection on historical processes, as well as on notions of temporality from which we understand the past, present, and the future—the uncertain times. For that, Joreige is interested in the different subjective stories of this period and wishes to express the tensions and anxieties, but also the expectations felt by the population of that time.

This exhibition comprises a series of mixed media artworks that assembles various elements such as drawings, archival photographs and documents as well as her commentary in the form of personal texts, thus creating visual and textual correspondences. In this project, like in her previous works, the artist gives a central place to the notion of montage.

Alongside Uncertain Times, The artist will present for the first time in Lebanon her short video Sun and Sea made at the invitation of Etel Adnan for her first poem written in French
in 1949.

Lamia Joreige is a visual artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Beirut. She earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied painting and filmmaking. She uses archival documents and elements of fiction to reflect on history and its possible narration and on the relationship between individual stories and collective memory. Her practice, rooted in her country’s experience, explores the possibilities of representing the Lebanese wars and their aftermath, particularly in Beirut, a city at the center of her imagery.

Joreige’s artworks have been presented internationally in various exhibitions and venues, among which: The Istanbul Biennial, Centre Pompidou and Musée Nicéphore Niépce (France); Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography, the New Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Taymour Grahne Gallery (US); Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Serpentine Gallery and Cardiff National Museum (UK); Sharjah Biennial (UAE) and Galerie Tanit and Art Factum (Lebanon).

She presented her films in festivals and venues such as FID Marseille; Medfilm Festival, Rome; Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Home Works I, IV & VII, Beirut; Paris Cinema; The Mediterranean Festival of Cinema, Montpellier; Beirut Cinema Days.
Her work is part of public and private collections across the world, such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris ; Tate Modern, London ; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah ; MATHAF, Doha ; Ars Aevi collection for Sarajevo Contemporary Art Museum, Sarajevo ; Nicéphore Niépce Museum, Chalon- Sur-Saone; Fonds régional d’art contemporain, Bretagne; Banque Libano- Francaise, Saradar Collection and Bank Audi, Beirut.

Lamia Joreige is the recipient of a fellowship at Columbia University Institute of Ideas and Imagination in Paris (2021).

She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for the year 2016-2017 and was shortlisted for Artes Mundi 7, the United Kingdom’s leading biennial art prize.
She is a cofounder and board member of Beirut Art Center, which she codirected from 2009 to 2014

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