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L'Orient-Le Jour
3 days ago
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Forests, visual history and memory: Where to be this weekend in the Middle East
When every weekend blurs into a never-ending scroll of flyers, exhibitions and underground gigs, having too many options can feel a lot like having none. This is why every Thursday, L'Orient Today, in partnership with The MYM Agenda, is going to guide you through cultural happenings across the Middle East that are actually worth your time. Consider this your weekly shortcut to what matters in the region's buzzing cultural scene. Lebanon is celebrating its favorite season — summer — with its ruthless heat and overcrowded roads. If you caught last week's selections, you'll know Beirut's art scene is making the best of it, oversaturating its galleries and museums with bright colors and "biting and bold commentary" dissecting this controversial season. And if you still haven't found what you were looking for, here are two more picks to add to your agenda: Displaying 80 artworks from Phillipe Jaber's collection, the Nuhad Es-Said pavilion of the National Museum is retelling Lebanon's cultural history — through travel and film posters. Impressions of Paradise shows how these advertisements between the 1920s and 70s shaped Lebanon's image both locally and internationally. If you're curious to know what made tourists want to visit us back then and what our cinemas and airports looked like, without having to stuff your nose in a textbook, this exhibition is for you. It's a look into a pre-Civil War country, told through snapshots of everyday life. If you love a Lebanese summer but hate the heat, you can head to Art Scene Gallery in Gemmayzeh to soak in its colors and energy inside an air-conditioned space. Until the end of the month, the gallery is showing Endless Summer, a collective exhibition of local and regional artists who've taken the vibrant season as their muse, specifically the light and freedom it offers. If you're one of the rare Lebanese expats who weren't able to escape the UAE this month, or had to cut your trip short due to our lack of matcha raves, worry not, the space right down your street might have what you're looking for: The Louvre, Abu Dhabi, is offering special summer events where you'll be sure to find something to suit your fancy. The museum is showing the same caliber of timeless art you're used to, while offering astronomy and art camps and classes for you and your little ones. Looking for something a bit more active? Take a kayak ride or a private catamaran cruise across the premises, or book your own private photography session for your most artsy Instagram post yet. For more information, click here. "Everyman's Mountain," the debut solo show by Emirati artist and designer Omar al-Gurg, showing in Lawrie Shabibi Gallery in al-Quoz, takes you on a visual journey through Mount Kilimanjaro's rarely-seen ecological zones. The mountain's forests are usually seen as reclusive, a space that no one enters or exits from, but Gurg chooses to depict it with intimacy and detail, and to see the mountain not as a conquest, but as a living, breathing world. For more information, click here. Printed Nostalgia at Fire Station, Doha, is bringing back print. It features a staggering (record-breaking, I assume) 98 artists from around the world — chosen from over 300 submissions — as it builds a space to reflect on architecture, migration, culture and everyday life, turning personal experiences into shared visual stories. Through photography, collage, painting, illustration, and text, digital expressions are reimagined as tactile prints. The space invites you to join the artists in choosing a point in time in your memories, and allowing it to live its own visual life. Artist Samer Hourani displays Between Confession and Silence at the Orient Gallery in Amman, a series of painted portraits as dramatic as the title suggests. The biggest window into someone's personality is their face, its expressions and eyes, and Hourani takes you through the catalog of characters — and their associated emotions — that marked his life.
L'Orient-Le Jour
4 days ago
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Israeli army spokesperson pays tribute to Ziad Rahbani
BEIRUT — The day after the announcement of the death of the great Lebanese artist Ziad Rahbani, whose vision, innovation, criticism, irony, and genius have been praised since Saturday by the political and artistic worlds, new reactions have poured in on social media and in the media. Among these wide-ranging tributes, which have managed to bring together around one figure parties that seemed irreconcilable, one stands out as a discordant note: the tribute paid to the composer, musician, and playwright by the Arabic-speaking spokesperson of the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee. Rahbani was famously opposed to the Israeli occupation, even moving in leftist circles advocating for resistance against Israel. Hezbollah also paid tribute to him on Saturday, following in the footsteps of virtually all other parties on the Lebanese political spectrum. "Lebanon bids farewell to the great artist Ziad Rahbani, a phenomenon of free spirit in a country that has always been a prisoner of words and truth," Avichay Adraee wrote in Arabic on X. He paid tribute to the artist who "spoke the truth when everyone else was silent" and lamented the "loss of an icon" and "the voice of a free conscience, the pulse of the streets, and the mockery of an intellectual who was never afraid of the truth." Israel was his 'number one enemy' Under the post, hundreds of comments appeared, reminding the spokesperson that the late artist saw himself as a 'resistant' and that Israel was his 'number one enemy.' "Let's not forget Ziad Rahbani's famous statements about resisting Israel, which you're trying to brush aside," one user accused, denouncing an attempt to "get closer" to the Lebanese people by using a figure as unifying as the singer. Along with the message, the user posted a phrase said to have been spoken by the artist, stating that it is impossible to "build a state with Israel at the gates": "You cannot have freedom and justice while they make you choose between your security and your dignity," he allegedly added. This sentence, whose origin was not immediately clear, has been repeatedly cited on resistance-supporting accounts and social media to pay homage to Rahbani since Saturday morning. Witticisms that became 'popular proverbs' Moreover, other tributes have been paid to the late artist, notably from former president Michel Aoun, who spoke of the "painful loss of a creator who transformed our suffering into laughter, our bitter reality into a stage where the laughter of the Lebanese resounded in the face of the harsh truth. "Your language has entered the collective memory and has become popular proverbs valid through the ages," he added on X. Jack Lang, former French culture minister and current president of the Institute of the Arab World, recalled the "son of the legendary Fairouz," who "cast a tender and sharp gaze upon the world, blending satire, poetry, and disenchantment," and "gave voice to silences and music to anger."
L'Orient-Le Jour
5 days ago
- L'Orient-Le Jour
What not to miss at the Night of the Museums
For 'Night of the Museums,' 24 museums across five cities (Tripoli, Jbeil, Jounieh, Beirut and Saida) will open their doors for free entrance tonight from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m., with buses shuttling visitors around Beirut. Ahead of the event, L'Orient Today asked curators to break the sacred vow of loving all their work equally and name the one piece that can't be missed… The Colossus of Byblos at the National Museum Unearthed in Byblos in 1926, the Colossus is a towering Egyptian-style statue that has watched over the National Museum of Beirut since it opened in 1942. Once part of a trio guarding a sacred pond, it's the only one to survive intact from the Bronze Age. 'It's the guardian of the sanctuary,' says Tania Zaven, Director of North Mount Lebanon at the Directorate General of Antiquities. 'And the museum is a sacred place too. Lebanon's past is here and we are all trying to protect it. At least, this is what I feel whenever I enter the place.' The broad-shouldered limestone Colossus was burnt during the Civil War, then sealed in cement cases for its protection. 'Covered then uncovered and covered then uncovered and it's still standing, it's still there!' Zaven says. 'It's protecting us… and it witnesses everything.' Artefacts and art at Sursock Museum At Sursock Museum, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige use history as their metaphorical paintbrush in a new collection that spans nearly 10 years of multi-media artwork. Coming in parallel to a retrospective of their films at Metropolis Cinema, Hadjithomas and Joreige's 'Where is my Mind?' springs from extensive research and collaboration with archeologists, geologists and historians. It's their first showing since 2012 and a rare solo exhibition, says curator Karina al-Helou, despite the Lebanese duo's international recognition. Born into a lineage of Palestinian, Greek and Syrian refugees, the versatile artists' work is nonetheless rooted in Lebanon's heritage, and the vast collection of work is shaped by their knack for storytelling. The exhibit is a natural continuation of the history on display at the National Museum, Helou says. Initially planned before the 2020 Port explosions, the exhibit was reimagined to explore art as a form of transcendence. 'It's about poetry, beauty and art as a way of getting over chaos.' The broken glass of AUB's Archeological Museum The Beirut Port blast of Aug. 4, 2020, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, reduced much of the glass collection at the American University of Beirut's Archeological Museum — located about three kilometers from the epicenter — to dust. 'Instead of trashing everything, we sifted through the shards, which were mixed with debris from the showcases and windows,' says curator Nadine Panayot. Out of the 72 glass artefacts that had been thrown to the floor, they managed to restore 28, eight of which were sent to the British Museum to be pieced back together and then featured in an exhibit, 'The Shattered Glass of Beirut,' which drew in record-breaking crowds before traveling to China and Japan. 'They're just glass vases, nothing special, ranging from the Roman to the Medieval period,' Panayot says. It wasn't the artefacts that people came to see, but the story of their cracks, which Panayot chose to leave visible, rather than masking with resin. 'I wanted to keep the scars,' Panayot says. They are now back on display in Beirut. Participating museums in Beirut: National Museum of Beirut, Sursock Museum, AUB Archaeological Museum, AUB Geology Museum, USJ Minerals Museum, USJ Prehistory Museum, USJ's Oriental Library, Banque du Liban Museum, Gallery of the Institut Français du Liban, Villa Audi, and the Nuhad Es-Said Pavilion for Culture. Participating museums outside of Beirut: In Tripoli, Saint Gilles Citadel Museum; in Jbeil, the Aram Bezikian Museum of Armenian Genocide Orphans, the Byblos Site Museum, the Marine Fossil Museum, the Pepe Abed Foundation, MACAM and LAU's Louis Cardahi Foundation; in Jounieh, the USEK Museum; and in Saida, Debbane Palace, Khan al-Franj, the Soap Museum, Hammam al-Jadeed, and Khan Sacy.
