Website Launch of Perspective #1

The Beirut-based Saradar Collection of modern and contemporary art from Lebanon announces the launch of the first edition of Perspective, an annual online and events program. Each year a curator is invited to critically engage with a theme derived from the Collection.

In 2018, the Collection has invited independent curators and academics Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath to curate the inaugural edition of this annual program. They conceived Perspective #1 as an online database and mapping project, charting out Beirut’s art scene from 1955 to 1975. This is a period usually considered as “the golden age” of Beirut, which ended with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. Bardaouil and Fellrath initiated the research through a preliminary consideration of 25 artworks, ranging from 1960 to 1970, by six artists from the Collection: Shafic Abboud, Rafic Charaf, Laure Ghorayeb, Halim Jurdak, Seta Manoukian, and Aref El Rayess. They then expanded their research to cover a diverse selection of other artists, along with a sizeable number of artworks, art spaces and exhibitions from the period at hand.

Bardaouil and Fellrath have unearthed more than 1,000 archival documents related to hundredes of art exhibitions at more than 50 art spaces that were operational in Beirut from 1955 to 1975. Working closely with Eps51, a Berlin-based design lab, they then developed an online databank in the form of an interactive map of Beirut coupled with a searchable timeline where visitors can access, for the first time, this significant body of archival materials. This can be explored at www.saradarperspective.com. In doing so, they have posited Perspective #1 as the most comprehensive mapping project to date of what is arguably one of Beirut’s most dynamic periods of artistic activity. This first edition, hence, serves as an open-ended, non-didactic research platform for artists, curators, and scholars with an interest in the study of Beirut’s modernist artistic networks and multi-polar strands of artistic production and criticism.

Throughout the years that followed the end of the French mandate over Lebanon in 1942, Beirut was undergoing a post-independence cultural awakening. This coincided with a succession of turbulent shifts within the political landscape of several countries across the region. In particular, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iraq, witnessed an increasingly vigilant crackdown on political opponents and liberal cultural practitioners. Meanwhile, a multi-confessional, pluralistic Lebanon enjoyed relative stability. As a result, a prolonged influx of intellectuals and cultural practitioners occurred leading to a proliferation of artistic practices and discourse within Beirut’s cultural milieu. This was coupled with an incursion in foreign capital encouraged by a fast-growing economy and the Lebanon-specific banking secrecy law. With increased commercial activity, the rise in number of affluent individuals with purchasing power and a knack for art, the art market boomed. New art galleries dotted the city, non-commercial art spaces thrived and exhibitions flourished. Amidst all of this, a generation of Lebanese, post-independence artists, most of whom are now represented by the Saradar Collection, had fully come of age. Shafic Abboud, Huguette Caland, Rafic Charaf, Aref El Rayess, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Paul Guiragossian, Etel Adnan, Khalil Zogheib, Laure Ghorayeb, Amine El Bacha, and Seta Manoukian are but a few examples. Alongside the artists of various nationalities who had made Beirut their home, they contributed to a heterogeneous pool of artistic practices and intellectual platforms that tenaciously engaged with the political, as well as the formal concerns of the time. A Beirut-specific form of cultural cosmopolitanism was in the making. Beirut was bursting at the seams, not only with people, but also with ideas.

Perspective #1 employs the Saradar Collection at once, as an entry point as well as critical inquiry into Beirut’s “golden age.” Through making accessible a wide plethora of primary documents ranging from exhibition catalogues, posters and invitation cards, to photographs and film footage of openings and art events, along with personal correspondence, artist/gallery contracts, newspaper reviews and articles, Bardaouil and Fellrath have created a research framework that allows for an In Situ consideration of a significant chapter in the history of modernism in Beirut and beyond. In doing so, they have positioned Perspective #1 as a discourse-changer in an art-historical terrain, which they believe, requires further inquiry, and where both the narrative and the rhetoric require a revisionist consideration.

Perspective #1 is an ongoing research initiative that will continue to exapnd in scope and content. An academic symposium will take place in Beirut in June 2019, and the respective proceedings and papers will be made available on the Perspective #1 website.

About the Curators
Drs. Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath are internationally recognised independent curators and academics. They are Founders of Art Reoriented, a multidisciplinary curatorial platform based in Munich and New York, Chairmen of the Montblanc Cultural Foundation in Hamburg, and Affiliate Curators at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. Bardaouil and Fellrath have held teaching positions at various universities including the London School of Economics and New York University. Their curatorial practice is equally rooted in the field of modernist studies, as well as in global contemporary artistic practices. Over the past decade, Bardaouil and Fellrath have jointly curated numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions including Art et Liberté: Rupture, War, and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948), Ways of Seeing, When Process Becomes Form: Dansaekhwa and Korean Abstraction, Staging Film, Tea with Nefertiti, Told Untold Retold, and Mona Hatoum: Turbulence. Their exhibitions have been shown in renowned museums and institutions worldwide such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, Arter - space for art in Istanbul, Reina Sofia in Madrid, Gwangju and Busan Museums of Art in South Korea, Mathaf - Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, the Tate Liverpool, Villa Empain in Brussels, Kunstsammlung K20 in Duesseldorf, IVAM in Valencia, NYU Art Gallery in Abu Dhbai, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. In 2013 Bardaouil and Fellrath were curators of the Lebanese National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and in 2016 they were part of the team of curatorial attachés for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. They are curators of the UAE Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2019.

About Saradar Collection
Saradar Collection is an initiative built around a private collection with a public mission to preserve, study and share modern and contemporary art from Lebanon. Continuously expanding, the collection contains more than 250 works of art by over 40 artists dating from 1917 until today. While focused primarily on Lebanese artists, Saradar Collection also contains artworks by regional and international artists with ties to Lebanon. Encompassing both traditional and new media, the collection includes works on paper, painting, photography, video, installation and sculpture. Initiated by Mario Saradar in 2012, Saradar Collection is part of Marius Saradar Holding, a family-owned business. It started as a desire to address the lack of institutional collections in the country and to share local artwork with the public. As international interest in Lebanese art is increasing, the initiative’s aim is to support local artists and ensure that a significant part of the country’s artistic heritage is preserved and shared.  Saradar Collection continues to grow in both the acquisition of works and the development of critical thinking and knowledge around the artworks, and more broadly, art in Lebanon. In addition to making the collection available to the public through the website and exhibition loan program, the collection is also the starting point for programming and research such as Perspective, an annual project, where a guest curator is invited to engage critically with a theme inspired by the Saradar Collection. Challenging classical exhibition modes, the project can be adapted to different platforms for each intervention. Focusing on topics related to the curators’ field of interest, Perspective intends to explore and develop new forms of dialogue and reflection around the collection.