Gilbert Hage
Eleven Views of Mount Ararat | 2009
11 inkjet prints on Fine Art Ultrasmooth paper. 90 x 110 cm each. Ed.2/5 + 2 AP
“Referring in its title to the famous series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by the Japanese artist Hokusai, which was later augmented to forty-six prints and which was produced between 1826 and 1833, Gilbert Hage’s Eleven Views of Mount Ararat (2009) depicts another preeminent mountain, one also viewed by many as sacred, this time as it appears in the context of various houses of members of the Armenian community of Lebanon. Could Hage have made a book with thirty-six views, if not forty-six views, of mount Ararat? Not at this historical point; Hage’s book implies, intertextually and symptomatically, an absence, one that cannot be alleviated simply by photographing additional appearances of the mountain (in paintings, drawings, postcards, etc.) by visiting more interiors (in fact, Hage did photograph more than eleven such instances, as is indicated on the acknowledgements page of his book, but he justly did not include them in the book).” (Jalal Toufic)
Reference GH-PH-2009-A(1-11)
Biography of the artist
Born in Beirut, Lebanon. 1967
Works and Lives in Lebanon
Gilbert Hage is a photographer. His photographic projects include: I Hated You Already Because of the Lies I Had Told You (2011), Why Do We Feel Like Kafka? (2011), Eleven Views of Mount Ararat (2009), Strings (aka With Strings Attached (2008), Pillows (2007) Screening Berlin (2006), 242 cm2 (2006), Homeland 1 (aka Toufican Ruins?, 2006), Phone [Ethics] (2006), Here and Now (2005), Beirut (2004), Anonymous (2002), and Roses (1999). His works have been exhibited at Photo Museum (2012), Anvers, Belgium, Espace Naila Kettaneh Kunigk, Beirut (2012), Museum of Photography Thessaloniki (2011), Royal College of Art, London (2011), Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2011), Sharjah Biennial (2011), White Box, Munich (2010), the French Cultural Center, Beirut (2010), Espace Naila Kettaneh Kunigk, Beirut (2009), Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros, Hungary (2007), Modern Art Oxford (2006), House of World Cultures, Berlin (2005), Galerie Tanit, Munich (2004), Galerie Alice Mogabgab, Beirut (2004, 2002, 1999), and Videobrasil, São Paulo (2003). He is the co-publisher and co-editer, with Jalal Toufic, of Underexposed Books.
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