A DANCE WITH HER MYTH

ARTIST MOUNIRA AL SOLH A multimedia installation

CURATOR NADA GHANDOUR General Curator of Heritage

Commissioner and curator of the Pavilion of Lebanon

DINA BIZRI Assistant curator

Preview: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 5 p.m.

Pre-opening: 17, 18 and 19 April 2024

The Lebanese Visual Art Association

THE SCENOGRAPHY OF THE PAVILION OF LEBANON

Karim Bekdache, Architect

Exhibition: April 20 – November 24 2024

Arsenale, Artiglierie building

Campo della Tana 2169/F, Castello 30122 – Venice Italy

@LebanesePavilionVenice2024

#LebanesePavilionVenice2024

https://www.lebanesepavilionvenice.com

For the second consecutive time, Lebanon is present at La Biennale di Venezia, the most important art exhibition in the world.

The Lebanese Pavilion is a strong commitment to encourage Lebanese artists and to promote and preserve Lebanon’s vibrant artistic scene on the global stage.

The Selection Committee, composed of renowned international experts chose Mounira Al Solh for “her ability to tackle poignant themes, focusing on migration and the ongoing witnessing of war and trauma with humor and a poetic approach, using a diverse range of artistic mediums: painting, drawing, embroidery, video, music, performance, and new technologies. The juxtaposition of these elements creates immersive and multisensory worlds, conveying a deep social engagement.

Her art is narrative, powerful and expressive, and brings together a diversity of materials, oral stories, forms and gestures. The questions raised by her work will significantly resonate with the issues of our time.”

The Pavilion’s scenography has been entrusted to the architect Karim Bekdache.

The Lebanese Pavilion is located in La Sala di Artillery, inside the Arsenale, one of the two main venues of La Biennale di Venezia

Artist Mounira Al Solh

will represent Lebanon at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

Al Solh, is a multi-disciplinary visual artist born in 1978 in Beirut. She lives and works between Beirut and Amsterdam.

Al Solh, is a multi-disciplinary visual artist born in 1978 in Beirut. She lives and works between Beirut and Amsterdam.

She learned the double bass at the National Conservatory of Music in Lebanon, then graduated in Painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut (1997-2001) and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (2003-2006). She was also a research resident at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2007-2008). Self-reflectivity is a central strategy of her work, which explores feminist issues, tracks patterns of micro-history, bears witness to the impact of conflict, migration and displacement. Her art is socially engaged, focusing on antipatriarchal matters, the ongoing witnessing of war and trauma, language and music, historical and geographical connections and can be political and poetically escapist all at once. Al Solh strives to craft a sensory language that defies nationality and creed. In 2008, Al Solh collaboratively initiated a magazine titled NOA (Not Only Arabic), and in 2013, she co-founded NOA Language School in Amsterdam. Currently Al Solh co-initiates Modka Beiroet, where she organizes friendly and community based exhibitions and workshops in the Netherlands and in Lebanon.

Nada Ghandour

PHD in History and expert in modern and contemporary art,

Nada Ghandour is a heritage curator.

She holds four specialties:

Masters in Museology (École du Louvre)

Masters in History of Art (Sorbonne Paris IV)

Masters in Preventive Conservation of Heritage (Paris 1)

Masters in Digital Humanities (Sciences Po Paris)

She is an independent curator specializing in cultural management and digital technology.

She has worked in some of the largest European and North American museums, notably the Museum of Fine Art (Montréal), the Musée National Picasso-Paris (France) and the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris).

Thus, she has participated in large-scale exhibitions, such as:

Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to the present day (2008)

Picasso! The Anniversary Exhibition (2015-2016)

Icons of Modern Art. The Shtouchkine Collection (2016-2017)

She was the commissioner and curator of the Lebanese Pavilion 

“The World in the Image of Man” at la Biennale Arte 2022.

Dina Bizri 

Dina Bizri is an independent curator and art advisor.

She has curated solo and group exhibitions in various galleries and institutions in Beirut, Paris and New York, as well as charity auctions of contemporary art.

She graduated from the Institut d’Études Supérieures des Arts – IESA Arts & Culture, Paris, and has worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, as well as in various contemporary art galleries, including Perrotin (Paris), CRG (New York) and Lehmann Maupin Gallery (New York)