DUBAI: “We’ve been working a lot on questioning the writing of history in Lebanon — and elsewhere; the construction of imaginaries and stories kept secret,” says Lebanese artist and filmmaker Joana Hadjithomas.
In “Remembering the Light,” their solo exhibition which runs at Beirut’s Sursock Museum until September 4, Hadjithomas and her husband and creative partner Khalil Joreige present a collection of works that gather their wide-ranging influences and interests. Not just hidden histories — such as those revealed in the video installation “Remember the Light,” from which the show takes its title and in which divers head into the depths of the sea of Lebanon’s coast, drifting down past tanks, ships, and artifacts from ancient civilizations — but the power and necessity of art in troubled times, the cyclical nature of time, regeneration from chaos, and much more. It is also, as the title suggests, a show filled with hope, even though the bulk of the works on display were created at a time when hope was in short supply in Lebanon.
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. (Supplied)
“But My Head Is Still Singing,” the sixth work in their series “I Stared At Beauty So Much” — one of three main bodies of work around which the exhibition is based — is a prime example. It’s an installation in which looped videos are projected onto two screens made from layers of broken and salvaged glass. Glass from the duo’s studio and apartment, both of which were devastated by the explosion in the Port of Beirut in 2020.
“We wanted to transform the glass into something,” says Hadjithomas. “After the blast, it was very difficult to produce art… There was this question. ‘What for? How can art help with all this?’ And we thought about the figure of Orpheus (from Greek mythology), saddened by the loss of (his lover) Eurydice. He was dismembered by the maenads, but his head still kept singing. So, we brought together some friends, and we recited some verses from several poets (poetry and poets, she says later, can “counter chaos”) that refer to Orpheus. Even though our voices were exhausted, we were still singing, in a way. So you hear the voices and you can see some of the words on the screen.”
Collaboration such as this is key to the duo’s work (“We like to see through the eyes of others,” Hadjithomas says). Take the divers in “Remember the Light,” for example. That video, Joreige explains, is “about the feeling we have sometimes that our world is shrinking — losing some variation of color and the possibility of light, and we have to find it. The more you go down in water, the more the water will filter the light and you’ll lose the colors. But if you put a light here, all the color will reappear, and when you remove the light, the plankton remember the light and refract its luminescence.” It is, Hadjithomas adds, “a (reminder) to remember the light, even in times of despair.”
Message with(out) a code, 2022 Close-up, tapestries, different kind of yarn. (Supplied)
Collaboration is also central to their ongoing “Uncomformities” project, another of the show’s major bodies of work, and one which won the duo France’s most significant contemporary art prize in 2017. The works in the project — including “Palimpsests,” “Time Capsules,” “Message With(out) A Code,” and “Blow Up” — are based around their fascination with what lies hidden beneath our feet, particularly in three cities: Athens, Paris, and Beirut. The project was inspired by core samples taken by geologists and archeologists — which show the layers of stratification in the earth and can be “read” by experts.
“The fact that these things were taking us into really deep time was very interesting,” says Hadjithomas. “Archeologists talk about the way things are always changing and evolving. And at the moment like the one we are living, understanding that after disasters there’s always a regeneration is very important.”
“Most of the time, when you imagine sedimentation (in the earth), you think of a stratification that is linear,” Joreige says. “But what we discovered with archeology is that when you dig, what is old moves up, and what is new moves down … you are recycling, redoing, regenerating. You are using the traces of civilizations to build new ones.”
That’s apparent in “Time Capsules,” an installation that includes three large tubes of core samples taken from the area around the Sursock Museum, and which include traces of the tsunami that occurred following the Beirut Earthquake of 551 CE, killing tens of thousands.
“The undergrounds of cities help us understand the way histories are always cycles of construction and destruction and regeneration,” says Hadjithomas. “And this movement of deep time and history can help us when we are in situations (like today).”
“Unconformities” also includes “Message With(out) A Code,” a collection of tapestries based on large photographs the pair had collected of archeological traces from digs, woven in such a way that they appear three-dimensional, even though they are not.
“We were fascinated by these samples,” says Hadjithomas. “We started taking pictures of them, but without really knowing what they were.”
“We weren’t really able to understand what we were seeing. Like, you think you’re looking at stone, but actually you’re looking at teeth. You always need the eyes of others,” Joreige says, once again highlighting the benefits of their collaborative process, in this case working with archeologists.
While it’s clear that the duo’s work would not be what it is without the input of others, perhaps the most significant factor in all of it is their own natural curiosity. When they come across an object that most of us would discard, their instinct is to ask instead: “Why is this here and what can we learn from it?” They might keep that object for years before they figure out how to turn it into art, but inevitably they do. And with “Remembering the Light,” they hope once again to spark that same curiosity in others.
“We are trying to reveal a certain complexity,” says Joreige. “Sometimes you can’t explain because there’s nothing to explain. There’s no easy answer. But (for visitors), we hope that an encounter will occur. We want to share this moment of experiencing something uncommon.”
“We take people with us on a journey to experience and to share knowledge, share emotions and research. For me, it’s not about understanding everything, but to have, like, an impression,” Hadjithomas adds. “You just have to feel something, then understand more if you want. There’s a lot of layers. And you can dig as much as you want.”
