Stéphanie Saadé
Traversée des états (Crossing States), 2024
Terrazzo panel inlaid with fragments of the album Jerusalem in my Heart by Fairuz (1972) (vinyl, cassette and cd).
120 x 90 x 2 cm
Copyright The Artist
The first three panels of this series are in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou and are currently on view. Traversée des états (2023 - in progress) recounts, through...
The first three panels of this series are in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou and are currently on view.
Traversée des états (2023 - in progress) recounts, through the abstract prism of a mineral material, the aesthetic upheavals that accompanied the modernization of Lebanon.
Terrazzo is a flooring technique that originated in Venice, Italy. A composite material, it is made from debris, mainly waste from the marble industry, mixed with a binder (lime, cement or, more recently, resin) which is then poured and polished. This technique enjoyed its heyday in the 1920s during the Art Deco period in Europe, before spreading abroad, notably to Lebanon in the late 1940s. For Stéphanie Saadé, terrazzo is emblematic of Lebanese houses built at the dawn of the 50s. This is true of her childhood home in the Lebanese mountains, as well as her maternal grandparents' house on the outskirts of Beirut. By taking a fresh look at this omnipresent material, the artist goes back to the foundations of her aesthetic vocabulary and artistic sensibility. This sensitivity is equally marked by the music of Lebanese diva Fairuz, which is transmuted into the panels.
The panels are made using a singular process: scraps of vinyl, cassettes and compact discs corresponding to Fairuz's landmark albums have been agglomerated into a matrix. By deploying the terrazzo vertically, Saadé reveals the conceptual and graphic dimensions of a material that has been considered ecological from the outset. The framework in which the work is produced links a subject taken from Lebanon's history to a current, local context and issues.
The Fairuz albums used to produce the first two panels are Andaloussiyat (1966) and Maarifti Feek (1984). They indicate two important historical sequences in Lebanon: the 1960s, marked by an artistic and cultural explosion that preceded the Lebanese civil war. The two albums also retrace Fairuz's musical evolution. The first revives the Muwashshahât, Andalusian melodies belonging to the pure Arab musical tradition, while the second overturns the norm by combining Fairuz's deep, crystalline voice with jazzy, funk orchestrations. The three albums on which the next 3 panels are based are Jerusalem in my Heart (1972), Mais el Rim (1975) and Loulou (1979), all of which are chronologically situated within the aforementioned period of upheaval.
On each panel, the album shreds are arranged chronologically, with vinyl at the bottom, magnetic tape in the middle and CDs at the top; they form a gradation of colors referring to the different physical media in which this abstract music was embodied, and which have marked the history of the music industry. It's not so much the disappearance of an era that Traversée des états recounts as a metamorphosis.It is the slow process, both painful and fertile, of the transformation of the habitat, resulting from the economic, social, historical and political transformations of the Lebanese society of the time and of the world, that interests the artist; the surface generally the least studied, the most neglected: the floor, is the subject of this new project.
Traversée des états (2023 - in progress) recounts, through the abstract prism of a mineral material, the aesthetic upheavals that accompanied the modernization of Lebanon.
Terrazzo is a flooring technique that originated in Venice, Italy. A composite material, it is made from debris, mainly waste from the marble industry, mixed with a binder (lime, cement or, more recently, resin) which is then poured and polished. This technique enjoyed its heyday in the 1920s during the Art Deco period in Europe, before spreading abroad, notably to Lebanon in the late 1940s. For Stéphanie Saadé, terrazzo is emblematic of Lebanese houses built at the dawn of the 50s. This is true of her childhood home in the Lebanese mountains, as well as her maternal grandparents' house on the outskirts of Beirut. By taking a fresh look at this omnipresent material, the artist goes back to the foundations of her aesthetic vocabulary and artistic sensibility. This sensitivity is equally marked by the music of Lebanese diva Fairuz, which is transmuted into the panels.
The panels are made using a singular process: scraps of vinyl, cassettes and compact discs corresponding to Fairuz's landmark albums have been agglomerated into a matrix. By deploying the terrazzo vertically, Saadé reveals the conceptual and graphic dimensions of a material that has been considered ecological from the outset. The framework in which the work is produced links a subject taken from Lebanon's history to a current, local context and issues.
The Fairuz albums used to produce the first two panels are Andaloussiyat (1966) and Maarifti Feek (1984). They indicate two important historical sequences in Lebanon: the 1960s, marked by an artistic and cultural explosion that preceded the Lebanese civil war. The two albums also retrace Fairuz's musical evolution. The first revives the Muwashshahât, Andalusian melodies belonging to the pure Arab musical tradition, while the second overturns the norm by combining Fairuz's deep, crystalline voice with jazzy, funk orchestrations. The three albums on which the next 3 panels are based are Jerusalem in my Heart (1972), Mais el Rim (1975) and Loulou (1979), all of which are chronologically situated within the aforementioned period of upheaval.
On each panel, the album shreds are arranged chronologically, with vinyl at the bottom, magnetic tape in the middle and CDs at the top; they form a gradation of colors referring to the different physical media in which this abstract music was embodied, and which have marked the history of the music industry. It's not so much the disappearance of an era that Traversée des états recounts as a metamorphosis.It is the slow process, both painful and fertile, of the transformation of the habitat, resulting from the economic, social, historical and political transformations of the Lebanese society of the time and of the world, that interests the artist; the surface generally the least studied, the most neglected: the floor, is the subject of this new project.