Sign of the Times: Collage in the work of six Lebanese artists.
Rachel Dedman.
| 2018
This essay examines the practice of collage in the work of artists represented in the Saradar collection. Historically, collage is characterised by its introduction of the ‘real’ into the painted plane, troubling the distinction between the imaged and the actual. The text argues that, in its cumulative integration of realities both internal and external to the image, collage is also characterised by a particular temporal state; one in which time is unsettled and extended. Collage is predicated upon the existence of other objects; its contents are always older than the picture itself. Engaging with work by Shafic Abboud, Halim Jurdak, Mohammed Rawas, Nada Sehnaoui, Hanibal Srouji and Laure Ghorayeb (a piece from outside the Saradar Collection), the text asks, how does collage as a medium relate to their concern with the subjectivity of historiography, the surface of the city, and the imbrication of personal and national memory?