News
The preview of La Biennale di Venezia is tomorrow and we are thrilled to celebrate our artists in Venice!
Multidisciplinary artist WAEL SHAWKY will represent Egypt with 'Drama 1882', a filmed rendition of an original musical play that he directed, choreographed, and composed about Egypt's nationalist Urabi revolution against imperial influence (1879-82).
Walid Raad, currently distinguished visiting professor of photography, will begin his tenured appointment at Bard College in fall 2024 as professor of photography in the Division of the Arts. Raad is an artist whose works include photography, video, mixed media installations, and performances. His works include the creation of The Atlas Group, a 15-year project between 1989 and 2004 about the contemporary history of Lebanon, as well as the ongoing projects Scratching on Things I Could Disavow and Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut). His books include Walkthrough, The Truth Will Be Known When The Last Witness Is Dead, My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair, and Let’s Be Honest The Weather Helped.
We are pleased to invite you to the opening of Marwan Rechmaoui solo exhibition Chasing the Sun in Beirut.
Rechmaoui is a conceptual sculptor who works predominantly with concrete, metal, rubber and wax. Continuing his inquiry into the socio-geographies of cities, Rechmaoui introduces a fresh body of work centered around the concept of play. Musing down memory lane, he examines the streets of Beirut through the lens of childhood games, prompting in the process multifold questions about the influence of toys on shaping societies.
On Thursday, 13 March from 6 to 8pm in our Downtown Beirut space.
Image: Exhibition View, Marwan Rechmaoui, Chasing the Sun, Beirut 2024.
Congratulations! The Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2024 honors Tieu´s artistic position that deals with and critically discusses Germany’s complex history, especially in these socio-politically challenging times.
In her artistic practice, Sung Tieu combines sculpture, drawing, sound, video, and installation. Referring to the visual language of minimalism, Tieu researches neglected socio-political histories, often focusing on Cold War-related narratives.
Presented in cooperation with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin for the eighth time, the award includes a large-scale survey exhibition of the artist at the KW, curated by Léon Kruijswijk and scheduled to open in February 2025.
We are very pleased to invite you to the opening of Aref el Rayess's exhibition in Beirut.
Image: Aref el Rayess, Untitled, 1996, acrylic on masonite
On Thursday, December 14, from 5 to 8 pm,
at Sfeir-Semler Downtown, Beirut
We are delighted to announce the opening of BLIND DATE 2.0.
AMNA ELHASSAN, ALIA FARID, DANIELE GENADRY, BAYAN KIWAN, FARAH AL QASIMI, TALA WORELL
Following a first edition of BLIND DATE in our Beirut space in 2017, we are bringing the concept to Hamburg, with a group exhibition including artists from outside our gallery roster. Unknown to us and to each other, the 6 invited artists for this second edition are coincidentally all young female artists. With widely different practices and modes of expressions, they all have ties to the Arab-speaking world, and address each in her own way questions and subject matters linked to their roots and cultural heritage.
Image: Farah al Qasimi, Surge, 2022, Film
On Thursday, November 2, from 6 to 9 pm,
at Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg
Congratulations! Tarik Kiswanson Awarded The Marcel Duchamp Prize 2023
The jury honors Kiswanson’s multidisciplinary work for its accomplishment both in its formal dimension and in its relationship to history. Relying on the energetic relationships between various elements, his work aims, with great sensitivity, at a universal message, the jury explained its decision.
Image: Tarik Kiswanson, Cocoon Wardrobe, 2023, oak, beech, resin, fiberglass, paint
The exhibition “Prix Marcel Duchamp 2023: The Nominees” is on view at Centre Pompidou in Paris until January 8, 2024.
We are happy to present two solo exhibitions in our space in Hamburg, on Thursday, September 7, 6 - 9 pm.
KHALIL RABAH
Relocation, Among Other Things
CHRISTINE STREULI
Falling apart (permanent version)
September 7 - October 27
Mo - Fr 11 am - 7 pm, Sa 11 am - 4 pm
Looking Forward to Seeing You at FRIEZE LONDON.
Art Unlimited
ETEL ADNAN, MOUNIRA AL SOLH, YTO BARRADA, DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE, SAMIA HALABY, TARIK KISWANSON, MARWAN, RABIH MROUE, WALID RAAD, AREF EL RAYESS, WAEL SHAWKY, RAYYANE TABET, AKRAM ZAATARI
Sfeir-Semler Gallery is proud to announce WAEL SHAWKY’s solo exhibition in our Karantina flagship space in Beirut, with a new multifaceted colossal project, including a film, sculptures, paintings, and an installation.
Premiering Shawky’s I am Hymns of the New Temples in the Arab-speaking world, the exhibition centers around the film produced for the Pompeii Commitment program which takes as a starting point the ancient city buried under the ashes of Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D. and its multiple layers of interconnected ancient Mediterranean societies. The work questions the constructed narratives of humanity’s genesis, and how stories transmitted through space and time, across generations, millennia and continents often overlap as one civilization fades and another replaces it.
Image: Wael Shawky, I Am Hymns of The New Temples: Pompeii, 2023, Film
August 31 - December 29
Mo - Fr 10 am - 6 pm, Sa 11 am - 5 pm
Come visit us in our new space in Downtown Beirut with a show by RAYYANE TABET.
We are opening the space with RAYYANE TABET’s exhibition Arabesque in which the artist tackles themes of cultural appropriation and original context through the lens of this stylized ornamental pattern found in all genres of art. The word itself originally meant “in the Arabic style” in Italian. Today, it still indicates an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines but interestingly, does not exist in the Arabic language.
August 24 - December 8
Mo - Fr 11 am - 6 pm, Sa 11 am - 5 pm
at Hamburger Kunsthalle
in Collaboration with Kampnagel Sommerfestival, Hamburg
Cotton Under My Feet
August 10, 2023 – November 12, 2023
In cooperation with the Kampnagel International Summer Festival (10–27 August 2023), the Hamburger Kunsthalle is hosting in 2023 a project by the Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad. In the style of his presentation Cotton Under My Feet at the Museum Thyssen Bornemisza (2021/2022), Walid Raad is designing a parcours through the galleries where the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s permanent collection is on view. His interventions will document events in the history of the collection in narratives that are partly true and partly fictional. Juxtaposing existing exhibits with purported finds from the museum’s repositories, Raad thus spins new tales about how the collection came together. He will also display his own works alongside the collection objects, highlighting historically relevant details to uncover previously unknown facts about the history of the museum.
More information
Sfeir-Semler is very happy to announce RAYYANE TABET's solo exhibition opening in our gallery in Karantina, Beirut.
The Return is an immersive installation that completely transforms the vast exhibition space of Sfeir-Semler Beirut, turning it into a foreign stratosphere. Stepping into the gallery, visitors are immediately bathed in a blue haze that engulfs objects and people alike and magically transforms their appearances. After the eyesight has adjusted to the dimmed setting, one distinguishes awe-inspiring, larger-than-life images of a bull’s head, that look like reliefs on a series of 8 symmetrically built free-standing walls.
May 4 - August 19
Mo - Fr 10 am - 6 pm, Sa 11 am - 5 pm
We are proud to present MOUNIRA AL SOLH’s second solo exhibition in our Hamburg space, including painting, drawing, textile, installation, video, performance, and sound works.
Pocket Rhythms draws its title from the artist’s immersion into popular Arabic music from the 70s and 80s. These omnipresent tunes in war-torn Lebanon would fill gaps between news bulletins, as continuous radio sounds rose in the air from shelter to shelter. The habit remained, and as Al Solh paints, she constantly keeps sound playing in the background. The result is a new series of loud, flamboyant paintings that transpose a sense of immediacy and urgency, and that question the intersection of artistic production and political unrest, the contexts in which works are made and performed, and the role music plays in our collective memory. What starts with lyrics from an iconic song, often ends in a mash up of personal moments, sprawled on canvas.
Image: Mounira Al Solh, Aala al bahr, at the beach, 2023, Embroidered beach parasol, textile, two beach chairs, video, sound
April 20 - August 19
Mo - Fr 11 am - 7 pm, Sa 11 am - 4 pm
Sfeir-Semler Hamburg is happy to announce the first solo exhibition of Sung Tieu!
Join us for the opening on February 3rd from 6 to 9 pm
Sung Tieu: Everything or Nothing
through April 16, 2022
Image: Sung Tieu, Moving Target Shadow Detection, 2022, HD animation and sound (video still)
Opening hours: Mo - Fr, 10 am - 7 pm Sat, 11 am - 4 pm