The artist and filmmaking couple Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige ( born in Beirut, 1969) have been examining the regime of appearance and suggestions from images since the Lebanese civil wars with fictional narrative practices that the Jeu de Paume is showcasing in a masterful retrospective exhibition. Photographic sets, films, video, installation, texts, and sound performances immerse us in the turpitudes of a crossing of lost memory outside of the official history. It’s an archeology of remanence and of the power of removal in contemporary Lebanon plagued by violence and the ravages of time, torments that they counter with nostalgia and the imaginary by resorting to extreme innovative experiments from further studies and investigations. From the first room, we are invited to enter into this “Circle of Confusion”, an aerial view of Beirut cut into 3,000 fragments that the visitor is welcomed to grab, playing on his reflection in the image of a wide mirror, a story within a story foreshadowing others. In the video “Always with You”, election campaign posters file in a continuous flow to saturation and their possible eradication. “Khiam” and “Objects of Khiam”, is an account of six detainees from this camp and the photographic series of objects they fabricated. We leave the first room with the “Postcards of War” offered of idealized views of the Beirut Riviera in the 1960s that the fictitious photographer, Abdellah Farah, burned, highlighting the discrepancy between the “Wonder Beirut” and the befallen devastations.
EXPOSITION
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Until September 25th, 2016
Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
France
http://www.jeudepaume.org
