Rania Stephan - On Never Being Simply One: Past

The exhibition is driven by the differences between images, still and moving, the trace of an absence that is originary to those images. Approaching images like an editor – part detective, part cinephile – Stephan investigates how images collide and collude, multiply and subtract.

In her own words: “As an artist-filmmaker-editor, I work with images. I think in images. But mostly, I think about the relation between images, about what happens in-between images. Is it an addition or a collision, or even a lack? How far can the gap between two images stretch in order to open a space for other images to dive in and let the viewer’s imagination enter the narrative? How does one capture these invisible images?”

Produced between 2010 and today, the works that make up On Never Being Simply One fall between two of Stephan’s major film projects – The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosny (2011) and the ongoing Memories for a Private Eye (2015-). They present Stephan’s obsessive examination of the relationships between still and moving images, documentary and fiction, death and presence.


About the artist

Born in Beirut – Lebanon, Rania Stephan graduated in Cinema Studies from Latrobe University Melbourne- Australia and Paris VIII University- France. Her career in film has been long and diverse. She has worked as first assistant with renowned filmmakers, as well as camera person and editor with researchers in Social Sciences and Documentarists (Procession of The Captives, Waiting for Abu Zeid, Catherine or The Body of the Passion, Panoptic).

She has directed short and medium length videos and creative documentaries. Anchored in the turbulent reality of her country, her documentaries give a personal perspective to political events. She intertwines raw images with a poetic edge, where chance encounters are captured with compassion and humor.

The work on archival material has been an underlying enquiry in her artistic work. Her most recent work investigates forgotten images and sounds that haunt the present. By juxtaposing them with new ones, she explores a diversity of meanings, triggering renewed narratives and emotions.
Her artistic work explores how still and moving images collide and collude, multiply and subtract. Approaching images like an editor – part detective, part cinephile, she traces absence and remembrance, that are originary to those images. Her first feature film: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (Artist’s Prize: Sharjah Biennale 10, 2011) received international acclaim and won many prizes.

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