For Frieze 2019, Marfa’ is pleased to present a solo booth by Lamia Joreige.
In her multi-chaptered project Under-Writing Beirut, Joreige investigates significant locations within Beirut’s present. The project incorporates various layers of time and existence, creating links between the traces that record such places’ previous realities and the fictions that reinvent them. Mathaf (2013) was the first chapter, Nahr (2013-2016) is the second chapter and Ouzai (2017-ongoing) is the third.
The presentation consists of a series of works from Ouzai. Ouzai is a small area with a complex history, and somehow seems to encompass the quintessence of what is facing all of Lebanon right now – issues of sectarian division, displacement, community, urban transformation, density of construction, inequality, reconciliation, etc.
The series of new drawings Coastline is based on various maps and depart from the topography of Ouzai’s coastline and area, then growing organically to take abstract shapes, evoking flowers, bodily organs and cells.
The sculpture entitled Ouzai is inspired from and based on the mapping of the main avenues and streets that constitute Ouzai today. Most of them were made without formal planning, in flux, often defined by the rapid construction of houses and buildings, and forming a network of complex structures and shapes.
Ouzai, Cartography of a Transformation is a new work based on maps from the Directorate of Geographical Affairs in the Lebanese Military from 1956, 1962, 1970, 1983, 1995, and from Zoom Earth in 2017. It proposes a subjective and poetic visual interpretation of the transformation of Ouzai over the years.
