Press
"Trente-huit ans après l’ouverture de sa galerie en Allemagne, dix-huit ans après son installation dans le quartier de la Quarantaine à Beyrouth, Andrée Sfeir-Semler vient d’inaugurer un second espace, dans le centre-ville de Beyrouth, à la faveur de l’exposition « Arabesque » de Rayyane Tabet qui explore les thèmes de l'héritage, l'appropriation culturelle et la subjectivité de la perception."
"That achievement of complexity or sophistication from humble means is one that echoes through the history of embroidery. For Kettle’s Yard’s current exhibition in Cambridge, Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery (until October 29), the curator and art historian Rachel Dedman has united examples of the highly decorated dresses through which Palestinian women traditionally identified themselves. Through their needlework, the women are fighting against the obliteration of memory, history and a sense of place, embodied in localised traditions of embroidery. Alongside historic pieces are artworks by contemporary artists such as Mona Hatoum, Khalil Rabah, Mounira Al Solh, Aya Haidar, Majd Abdel-Hamid and Maeve Brennan which honour the craft’s potent legacy."
"At the outset of the Syrian Revolution in 2011, Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué began engaging with cell phone videos shot by civilians that were proliferating on YouTube and Facebook. With the rise of social media, these videos circulated to an international audience, disrupting the heavily regulated images produced by the Syrian regime. The Pixelated Revolution reflects Mroué’s attempt to apprehend the images shot by protestors, for whom producing a record was a final act preceding their murders by the regime."
"À la faveur de son installation immersive « The Return »*,Rayyane Tabet déploie avec la magie qui est la sienne un voyage, à mi-chemin entre enquête policière et paysage émotionnel, rapiéçant l’histoire d’une tête de taureau exhumée lors des fouilles du temple d’Echmoun à Saïda en juillet 1967 avant de réapparaître en 2017, dans les galeries gréco-romaines du Metropolitan Museum of Art à New York..."
"Rayyane Tabet discusses ‘The Return,’ his current show at Sfeir-Semler gallery, and how objects mean."
“Akram Zaatari was born in Saida, Lebanon in 1966. While growing up, armed conflict and a perpetual crisis loomed over everyday life. At a young age he began documenting life in Saida under Israeli occupation, taking photographs and collecting documents and objects specific to the culture and political landscape of the time. Zaatari revisited some of these documents, oral histories and photographs in the installation ‘Letter to a Refusing Pilot’, while representing Lebanon at the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013.”
“Artistic interest in paranoia, conspiracy, and governmental secrecy is hardly new. Yet Tieu’s work is representative of a particular strain of recent art demanding further elaboration. By this I mean work that is first and foremost research-based, frequently comprising ready-made elements incorporated into larger installation-cum-environments and often, but not always, mobilizing video, sound, and other screen infrastructures. … This work is like many of these categories, but it is not properly any of them. It shimmers with similitude but parries true equivalence.”
“Much of Batniji’s practice encapsulates this need to capture immateriality and the residues of loss. At the entrance of ‘No Condition Is Permanent’, his survey show at Mathaf in Doha, sits Impossible Journey (2002–09), an installation the artist created by laboriously shovelling sand from one spot to another – a performance captured in an accompanying looped video. Shown alongside ID Project (1993–2020), which documents the arduous process the stateless Palestinian artist undertook to obtain residency in France, the work frames the sense of dispossession – from land and nationality – that comprises the Palestinian condition.”
« The pioneering painter and digital artist explains what makes the computer the ultimate tool of abstraction. »
« À la galerie Sfeir-Semler de Beyrouth, deux accrochages se côtoient et se répondent tant par l’abstraction que par la kyrielle de couleurs qui les caractérisent : « Pour l’âge du Liban » deFarid Haddad et « De-Coding Colors » de Samia Halaby. »
“In 45th Parallel, Abu Hamdan delivers testimony through an actor, using speech and gesture to translate the entanglements of the border and the American legal system into a comprehensible format. This decision to corporealize the intangible nature of the border extends beyond the spoken word—each act is illustrated by a backdrop handpainted by set designers. A border claims to be clean, clear, disembodied—but it is maintained through incessant physical violence.”
„‚Forgetting wins over remembering, I must get used to this idea steht‘ in roten Buchstaben an der weißen Wand der Galerie geschrieben. Dass das Vergessen über die Erinnerung siegt, dagegen will sich Rabih Mroué offensichtlich zur Wehr setzen. Und zwar mit den Mitteln der Kunst. Mroué, der 1967 in Beirut geboren wurde, ist als Theaterregisseur, Schauspieler, Dramaturg und bildender Künstler seit über drei Jahrzehnten tätig. Seine Werke verbinden auf feinsinnige Weise persönliche Erfahrungen mit politischer Geschichte. Neben intimen Erlebnissen aus dem eigenen Leben thematisiert er die politischen Konflikte des Libanons, die Syrische Revolution und die Nachwirkungen des Arabischen Frühlings. Gerade hat in der Sfeir-Semler Gallery auf der Fleetinsel seine Ausstellung ‚My life always comes back to me as a lame dog‘ eröffnet.“
« Une trentaine de personnes étaient présentes mercredi dernier pour venir à la rencontre de la grande artiste palestinienne, Samia Halaby. Plus qu’une visite guidée, il s’agissait d’une envolée dans l’univers expressionniste, invitant le public à“de-coding colors” -en référence au titre de l’exposition -dans une atmosphère enivrante. L’Agenda Culturel vous présente une rétrospective de la visite guidée avec Samia Halaby. »
« Sfeir-Semler revient avec une exposition et deux parcours parallèles qui se déploient dans l’espace de la galerie à Beyrouth: de-coding colors (1982-2022), qui met en perspective les œuvres de Samia Halaby, artiste palestino-américaine vivant et travaillant à New York, et pour l’âge du Liban, retraçant le travail de l’artiste Farid Haddad au cours des cinquante dernières années de sa pratique artistique entre le Liban et les États-Unis. »
« Samia Halaby (b.1936 in Jerusalem) is a Palestinian-American artist, activist, and scholar living and working in New York. She was educated in the 1950s in the American Midwest, at a time when abstract expressionism was popular, but female abstract painters were often rejected.
In the 1960s she started working with intense colors to construct geometrical shapes, that repeat and spread on canvas surfaces. Over time, the geometric forms transformed into lines and diagonals that defined the dynamics of her compositions, ultimately withdrawing to liberate highly colorful textured brushstrokes. » ...