Art Encounters Foundation (ISHO House)

In his now-legendary works which form part of the Atlas Group Archive (1989-2004), Walid Raad explored the history of the recent Lebanese civil wars (1975-1990). Using facts as a starting point—historical, sociological, economic, emotional and aesthetic facts—while claiming that some facts can only be experienced in fiction, he created an intriguing account of experiencing the trauma and violence of war, at the same time intimate and distant. In several works, “hysterical documents” are references to the history of art in the Arab world, specifically the rapid development of a new infrastructure for art over the last decade. Raad uses the writer Jalal Toufiq’s notion of “the withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster” to elaborate on how the material and immaterial effects of war in the region can be seen in art, culture and tradition. While some results of war are material, such as the destruction of libraries and museums, colors, lines and shapes—in other words, art—are affected. But they can also hide, hibernate and take refuge for a period of time.

In the Art Encounters Foundation (ISHO House), he returns to the motif of museum walls, something which he has done in numerous past projects. Coming in various scales and shapes, the museum-like walls are constructed while blinking at the Louvre, the Guggenheim, the Whitechapel Gallery and other institutions with which he engages. Accompanying the walls are the stories of those who, for mysterious reasons, cannot enter the institutions, nor find the seemingly full walls to be empty inside, along with museum objects which morph into something else. ML