Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut, 2013

Colosse aux Pieds d'Argile, 2015

A large-­scale sculpture composed of marble columns and concrete cylinders transforms the gallery into a field. The columns are reclaimed from a nineteenth century house in Beirut that was clandestinely destroyed by a group of workers to force its reluctant owners to sell it.  The  cylinders  are  concrete  stress  test  samples  from  the  skyscraper  that  was  built  to  replace this house. 

The work confronts two versions of the same architectural element, the column, acquired from the same site spanning the course of one hundred years of urban development. Both the house and the skyscraper have reflected ideals of how life should be lived. Both have been extrapolated into ideas of how an environment should be built, un-­built or re-­built. Each has been used to usher concepts of modernity and each holds within their building blocks the seeds of their own unmaking.

Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, 2015