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For the past decade Walid Raad, Akram Zaatari, and Rabih Mroue, amongst others, have been dealing through their art with such themes as history, memory, violence and the civil war. In more ways than one the Lebanese contemporary art scene identifies largely with such post-war initiatives. Beirut Art Center’s latest exhibition, “The Road to Peace” has us looking into art pieces that were produced during the war. Harvested from private collectors or artists’ studios these pieces, ranging from drawings to sculpture, to collages to full scale Guernica style paintings, some of which were never intended for public viewing, “are a form of expiation, cleansing and apology from the hostility, brutality and cruelty of a mad environment.”Walking through the exhibition one can’t help but wonder about the literature of war (especially if they work in publishing). Many a writer has ventured into writing post war books on the Lebanese civil war. To name a few: Rabih Alameddine (I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters), Elias Khoury (Little Mountain), Rawi Hage (De Niro's game), Zeina Maasri (Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War). We, however, find ourselves at loss when it comes to naming anything that was written during the war. Certainly the war didn’t manage to lay to rest every single writer, and silence every single word. Surely if we looked through correspondences and diaries, if all hope for an actual manuscript is gone, we would find texts that are worth publishing. One wonders if an anthology isn’t in line.
As a second generation Lebanese (second in regards to the war) I often feel like I’m being kept out of some loop. People, my parents, don’t often want to talk about what happened. They talk about how it made them feel even less. It makes one feel like they are completely disconnected from where they come from. Give me some insight!
www.beirutartcenter.org
