A Speculative Portrait, 2020

Bassel Abi Chahine, fuelled by his need to reconstitute the unexplainable memories of his past life as Yousef Fouad Al Jawhary, a teenage soldier who died in 1984, during the Lebanese Civil War, has collated the most comprehensive inventory of archival material belonging to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) militias.

For all of his obsessive research, Bassel still has very little idea of what he looked like in his previous life. He may have an image of Yousef in his vast archive but without knowing what he looked like, he cannot identify himself amongst his collection. Having in mind the potential of such a picture existing amongst Bassel’s collection, Abu Hamdan approached Dr Caroline Wilkinson at Face Lab, a research group at Liverpool’s John Moores University that carries out forensic/archaeological research, including craniofacial analysis, and facial synthesis. By using Bassel’s sole portrait of his past incarnation, which was taken at the age of six or seven, as well as reference images of Yousef’s brother and father, Dr Wilkinson reconstructed what he may have looked like at 17 years old, just before his death. This was the result.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, A Speculative Portrait, 2020, Single channel video, looped, 2:30 min, Edition 3 + 2 AP, Installation view Sharjah Art Foundation 2022

Once Removed, 2019

This video work is a portrait of the time-traveling life of Bassel Abi Chahine, a 31-year-old writer and historian who has managed to obtain the most comprehensive inventory of extremely rare objects, photographs and interviews of the People Liberation Army (PLA) and Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) militia from the Lebanese civil war. His obsessive analysis, collection and unprecedented research into this one militia was done in pursuit of material to reconstitute what he describes as flashbacks and unexplainable memories from a previous life. Through his research Abi Chahine realized that his own lucid memories of a war he had not lived were due to the fact that he was the reincarnation of a soldier Yousef Fouad Al Jawhary, who died aged 16 on February 26, 1984 in the town of Aley.

Once Removed, 2019, HD video, color, and sound, 28 minutes, Ed. 6 + 2 AP, Excerpt