Emergency relief residency for artists from Lebanon
October 9–November 14, 2020
Participating artists: Lara Tabet, Omar Mismar, Maxime Hourani, Panos Aprahamian, Nour Sokhon, Betty Ketchedjian, and Nour Osseiran
Curated by: Amanda Abi Khalil
Temporary Art Platform (TAP) announces Make yourself at home: radical care and hospitality, a fully-funded program safely* bringing seven Beirut-based artists from Lebanon to Brazil, to take part in a five-week relief residency at Kaaysá Art Residency located in the heart of the Mata Atlantica Forest (São Paulo, Brazil).
The program was conceived to provide immediate support to artists and cultural practitioners who were impacted by the Beirut Port explosion on August 4.
Artists in Beirut have already been enduring multiple crises following the commencement of the Lebanese Revolution on October 17, 2019, the total economic collapse, the total halt of cultural life, and the worsening Covid-19 pandemic.
Togetherness drives our organization and continues to shape its programs and ways of operating. For the last year, our planned programs were suspended, postponed, and re-shaped, however, the attack brought us together.
For the fourth iteration of our residency format, we will experiment with curating (from Latin curare) practiced through radical forms, gestures and propositions addressing (un)conditional hospitality, listening, mutual aid strategies, coalitional exertions and guest-host relations (philoxenia). Beyond self-care and welcoming rituals, we will look at care and hospitality as driving forces for collective solidarity, togetherness, generosity and hope in a context of the suffocating deadlock we are facing globally, especially as Lebanese and Armenian citizens today.
The activities and discursive program geared towards listening to each other, to nature and to the clamor of this moment will be accompanied by two guest psychoanalysts Denise Portinari (Psychoanalyst and Professor at the Department of Art and Design, Puc Rio de Janeiro) and Tania Rivera (Psychoanalyst and Curator).
Participants will learn about hospitality while studying the forms of hostilities historically inflicted upon Brazilian society and nature. Black and indigenous voices struggling against century-long oppression will inform participants engagement with the two politically and socially fragilized contexts we are connecting. The aim will be to move beyond fantasized narratives surrounding the Lebanese (and Arab) diaspora in Brazil as well as the reciprocal relations these two countries have been sustaining since the late 19th century.
Guests include Gabriel Bogossian (Independent Curator), Patrick Pessoa (Critic, Playwright and Professor of Philosophy), Marcos Chaves (Visual Artist), Hena Lee (Independent Curator), Bianca Bernardo (Curator) and Gui Mohallem (Visual Artist) amongst others.
Residency participants were selected from a group of thirty nominees put forward by colleagues and institutions from Beirut including Beirut Art Center, Beirut Art Residency, Ashkal Alwan, Zoukak, the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Haven for Artists, Culture Resource and Marfa’ Gallery.
Temporary Art Platform thanks Kaaysá and the Goethe Instituts Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Beirut for their support during these difficult times, as well as the Brazilian Consulate in Beirut and the community of friends and colleagues who privately donated and made this project possible despite the dire economic and health-related challenges we are facing.
Temporary Art Platform (TAP) is an international curatorial platform that was founded in 2014 to commission projects, residencies and site-specific artworks concerned by social practices and public spaces in Lebanon and abroad, with a particular focus on the Global South.
TAP’s structure and its para-institutional modes of operating give way to a deeper engagement with the context in which it unfolds, focusing on critical responses within shifting and dynamic social contexts.
In times like these, we need support for our small organization to survive and thrive. We (still) believe in the potential of social art practice to contribute to progressive societies.
Help us take care of our community of artists from Lebanon and visit our website for direct donations.
*The residency is adopting strict health regulations and measures to mutually protect participants, staff and residency guests from the widespread Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil.
