Following the Aug. 4 blast, the Beirut Art Residency decided to focus its energy on the local scene and make efforts to raise money for the BAR Support Fund, which promises to target young artists.
With its Gemmayzeh spaces destroyed in the blast, BAR has partnered with Ireland’s Void Gallery to host the fundraising exhibition “Before the Cypress Broke,” bringing together new and existing works that depict the events that have led to the country’s current dire state, including the port explosion.
The exhibition borrows its title from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “The Cypress Broke,” which reflects upon grief, its irreversible nature, and the relentless course of life. Initially meant to launch in November 2020, lockdowns both here and in Ireland delayed the show till April 2021.
“We took the time to come up with a curatorial theme and tie all the work together, without directly taking about the blast. It’s like a retrospective on where we stand today,” BAR director Amar Zahr told The Daily Star. “We chose artists that we had worked with in the past. All are Lebanese except for two past BAR residents, who started creating editions for Lebanon and wanted to give sale profits to the BAR Support Fund.
“Right after [the blast] we started thinking what we were going to do. We had lost our space and with everything else it wasn’t the right time to have artists’ residencies in Lebanon,” she added. “Instead, we set up a fund to help artists pay for materials, things for production, because it’s very difficult to afford anything with the rising prices.
“We’ve also always supported art students, so we wanted to align these two ideas and focus the fund for students and emerging artists, giving out small grants of, like, $200-$300 for the students and a bit more for the emerging artists, just for them to keep creating,” she said. “For the exhibition, 50 percent of the sales would go to the support fund and the rest to the artists themselves.”
The show features 15 artists showing in various media. Some work is directly linked to the blast, such as Ali Cherri’s watercolors of crumpled cars left on the roadside following the explosion. Others are presenting older works that center on themes of destruction or loss, such as Gregory Buchakjian and Valerie Cachard’s performance-based video “Abandoned Dwellings. Archive,” showing hundreds of objects and documents found in abandoned heritage buildings around Beirut.
As part of our current exhibition Before the Cypress Broke - presented in partnership with Beirut Art Residency - Void will be presenting each artist and a selection of their work.
— Void Gallery (@derryvoid) May 6, 2021
Today's artist feature is Ziad Antar. Find more about their work at https://t.co/1CYymAzxZB pic.twitter.com/3tHRWRiTGV
A parallel program of talks with the featured artists is also available through BAR’s website. As regards the future of BAR, this period of uncertainty has given the team much food for thought on where they go next and in what capacity. It’s unlikely they will return to the hosting of foreign artists or the traditional exhibition spaces they had before the blast.
https://t.co/s7qNbx0e5A#International appeal of #Beirut Art Residency#Culture pic.twitter.com/Q33XBSoiRC
— The Arab Weekly (@ArabWeekly) December 11, 2015
“For BAR it’s about finding an opportunity that would make sense for us. We want to focus on local artists, maintaining this scene and keeping artist in Lebanon, keeping that support coming to them and getting the art scene back on its feet,” Zahr said. “Eventually, maybe next year, we’ll open up a space for local artists, but for now we’re partnering with residencies abroad to send Lebanese artists on residencies.
“There’s one taking place in Rome in June where we’ll be sending three artists to work on a project about dialogue between Rome and Beirut, which will culminate in an exhibition one year from now,” she added. “We’re looking at long-term projects that will get Lebanese artists out there and support them with a stipend and get them the resources that they need to keep producing.
“Later we’re looking at a modular space, maybe something that already exists with another institution,” she said. “As long as we still have the BAR spirit of collaboration and getting invested in a project, we’ll find a way.”
For more info on “Before the Cypress Broke” and the BAR Support Fund, visit beirutartresidency.com
This article has been adapted from its original source.
