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.
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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.
