“Another exhibition at another foreboding historical moment” says the invitation card to Walid Raad’s exhibitions at Sfeir-Semler galleries in Karantina and Downtown. Raad’s artworks have time and again engaged such moments and what they make evident, possible, probable, thinkable, sayable, and imaginable. He has done so via three long-term ongoing projects: The Atlas Group (1989-2004), Scratching on things I could disavow, and Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut).

In this exhibition in Beirut, Raad once again displays documents that he creates but that he relates to as found and/or received, and attributes, in many instances, to imaginary collaborators. The documents are presented as aesthetic objects along with their accompanying stories. Raad’s objects are photographs (or most often, photographs of other documents, be they notebooks, paintings, drawings, maps), videos, sculptures or mixed-media installations. His stories are short. They read like reports, transcriptions of stories recorded by Raad, and often attributed to imaginary characters such as Suha Traboulsi, Farid Sarroukh, and Manal B. Tarabay. Raad relates to these characters “less as fictional creations and more as artistic collaborators who dwell in another realm, occasionally sending me signals I am able to decipher.”  

The dual exhibitions at Sfeir-Semler in Beirut showcase new and recent works. In Karantina, two large-scale immersive video installations fill entire rooms, enveloping viewers in trance-inducing images. These are accompanied by four sculptural works, and five series of prints that are typical of Raad’s approach, with his Dada-esque twist on current events. The 15 prints in Festival of (In)gratitude for example, look at first glance like large colorful abstractions, but upon closer inspection, they reveal familiar media images and newspaper fragments, turning journalistic captions into disjointed word salads. Similarly, a somewhat banal yet colorful book of World War I uniforms becomes on closer inspection an index of Lebanese artists collaborating with warlords. Raad’s works reveal obsessive detail: small, painstakingly cut black and white portraits of military or political figures; cutout newspaper captions in Arabic and English; drawn notations; photocopied maps, layers of stacked, organized paperwork. His stories are displayed in wall-texts that appear alternately as captions and institutional descriptions. But in Raad’s work, the stories are part and parcel—visual and conceptual elements that both anchor and wrest the displayed photographs, sculptures, and videos in and from their historical origins.

In the Downtown space, the artist presents a new multimedia installation that engages the 1983-84 bombardment of Lebanon by the most decorated American battleship, the USS New Jersey. The battleship’s arrival and actions in Lebanese waters were a direct consequence of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the evacuation of PLO fighters from Beirut, the election and assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the Sabra-Chatilla massacres, and the bombing of the US embassy and Marines headquarters in Beirut in April and October 1983. In an installation attributed to his imaginary collaborator Manal B. Tarabay, Raad leans into these loaded political, military, and historical events precisely because he sensed that their effects exceeded their political, military and historical dimensions. The artist presents dozens of photographic cutouts surrounding a covered car, all attributed to a character who seems unable to dislodge such images not only from her mind but also from her body.

For 30 years, Raad has been making his own documents. Most of the time, his documents allude to events that unfolded in Lebanon during the past five decades. And while these events did indeed unfold, they did so “not in this historical world but in another realm, one with its own strange landscape and odd characters,” says Raad. His artworks are his attempts to visualize and narrate what he sees and hears there.  

'The loudest muttering is over'