Checkers, 2019

The League, 2001-2009

In 2001, I was invited to Cairo to participate in a group show titled "Missing Links" with other Lebanese artists. In the same year, my family received news that my father was very sick with only a year to live. Both events propelled me to interview him, specifically on his years studying in Cairo (1956-1958). His timeline spanned from the Suez Canal war until his sudden departure, as he was persecuted as a political activist.

With all the information I gathered from the interview, I went to Cairo to research for my work in the exhibition. I was disappointed. There was nothing left from my father's story of Arab Nationalism, except for ruins.

Back in Lebanon, I worked on The League project, which was twenty-two black rubber cut-outs in the shape of the Arab countries, as individual entities. Black rubber made sense to me because it was a matt black material that, when hung on a white wall, will give the effect of wholes of void.

Contrary to what we were taught in school about the Arab World being one inseparable body, I could only see each country as scale, ratio, proximity, distance, border tensions or tranquility. At that time, I only saw the missing links.