Simone Fattal: Suspension of disbelief

Coinciding with her receipt of the Julio González International Prize, IVAM celebrates the work of Simone Fattal with her first solo exhibition in Spain, curated by Nuria Enguita and Rafael Barber Cortell.

The “suspension of disbelief” is a concept introduced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his work Biographia Literaria in 1817. This term refers to a reader’s ability to unquestioningly accept fantastic or unrealistic elements within a work of fiction.

According to Coleridge, readers can become wholly immersed in the narrative by pausing their critical faculties, accepting certain situations or creatures normally considered impossible, such as unicorns or magical worlds, as possible. Through this suspension, imaginary worlds can be explored, and emotional experiences otherwise unattainable under strict adherence to logic or everyday reality can be lived.

For her first solo exhibition in Spain, the French-Lebanese artist Simone Fattal has appropriated this concept and invites the audience to put aside their certainties and immerse themselves in a multicultural, nomadic space, created through a constellation of pieces made up of sculpture, drawing and editorial work. The exhibition brings together pieces from different periods, yet its layout is deliberately non-chronological, instead treating time as an elastic material in which the past, present and future merge. What’s more, through the use and fusion of diverse mythologies—especially those of Mediterranean origin—Fattal creates a narrative that dissolves borders and beliefs, and finds in archetypes the necessary tools to construct a hybrid archaeology with which to narrate worlds.

Born in Damascus in 1942 and raised in Lebanon, Fattal studied philosophy in Paris and established herself as an artist in Beirut the late 1970s, where she exhibited her work until the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. She left Lebanon in 1980 and settled in California, where she founded The Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary works. In 1988, she enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute to go back to making art and activate a new dedication to sculpture and ceramics. Since then her work has become more and more specialised and she has become an internationally renowned artist whose work has been exhibited in the most prestigious museums.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive book published by IVAM that includes texts by the curators as well as contributions from professionals such as Jacqueline Burckhardt and Omar Kholeif.