Another Festival of (In)gratitude
August 10, 2024–January 7, 2025
“Another exhibition at another foreboding historical moment” says the invitation card to Walid Raad’s exhibitions at Sfeir-Semler galleries in Karantina and Downtown. Raad’s artworks have time and again engaged such moments and what they make evident, possible, probable, thinkable, sayable, and imaginable. He has done so via three long-term ongoing projects: The Atlas Group (1989-2004), Scratching on things I could disavow, and Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut).
The dual exhibitions at Sfeir-Semler in Beirut showcase new and recent works. In Karantina, two large-scale immersive video installations fill entire rooms, enveloping viewers in trance-inducing images. These are accompanied by four sculptural works, and five series of prints that are typical of Raad’s approach, with his distinctive twist on current events. The 15 prints in Festival of (In)gratitude for example, look at first glance like large colorful abstractions, but upon closer inspection, they reveal familiar media images and newspaper fragments, turning journalistic captions into disjointed word salads. Similarly, a somewhat banal yet colorful book of World War I uniforms becomes on closer inspection an index of Lebanese artists collaborating with warlords.
In the Downtown space, the artist presents a new multimedia installation that engages the 1983–84 bombardment of Lebanon by the most decorated American battleship, the USS New Jersey. The battleship’s arrival and actions in Lebanese waters were a direct consequence of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the evacuation of PLO fighters from Beirut, the election and assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the Sabra-Chatilla massacres, and the bombing of the US embassy and Marines headquarters in Beirut in April and October 1983. In an installation attributed to his imaginary collaborator Manal B. Tarabay, Raad presents dozens of photographic cutouts surrounding a covered car, all attributed to a character who seems unable to dislodge such images not only from her mind but also from her body.
