Lara Tabet is a Lebanese clinical pathologist and visual artist. Her work at the intersection of photography, biology and the environment is rooted in research and experimentation. She is interested in the interaction between photographic and biological materiality while questioning the porous boundaries between analog and digital languages.
She uses old photographic techniques as well as new technologies in image-making and synthetic biology to explore the constant impulse to classifiy the living world and the tension between bio-politics and bio-poetics.
In The return of the old man to his youth, Tabet recontextualizes the homonymous ottoman book written in the 16th century by the scholar Ahmad Ibn Suleiman to revigorate Sultan Selim’s dwindling sexuality. This grimoire brings together various erotic tales and voluptuous teachings as well as remedies and sexual potions from Arab medicine.
These are interpreted as chemigrams, where the ingredients of the potions are made to react with the silver paper and the chemistry of development. Trained as a medical pathologist, Lara Tabet explores rituals rooted in the humor theory of Aristotle and Al Razi and through the performative image, questions the beliefs related to the body, sexuality and gender while reclaiming the figure of healer and reconnecting with ancient knowledges.
Salon Polyptyque
from August 26th to September 10th 2022
Centre Photographique Marseille
3, rue Henri Fiocca
13001, Marseille, France
https://www.centrephotomarseille.fr/polyptyque
