Beirut Caoutchouc, 2004-2008

Cities are my hometown. Cities accept everything. Cities provide everything.

Inspired from the cities I lived in, my work questions their urban space. In 1993, I moved from New York to Beirut. The Lebanese civil war had ended and Beirut was waiting to be re-built. I used to wander, get lost, discover new areas, find my way around every street, every neighborhood and tell stories about Beirut every day.

In the early 2000s, there was a debate about the reconstruction. The expressways that were proposed could bring someone from point A to B, without seeing the city. A disconnection would happen between the traveler and the neighborhoods, the people and the streets. At the same time, the expressways would divide the city and turn the neighborhoods into clusters. Instead of having a busy street as a meeting point between two neighborhoods, there would only be empty borders, which neighborhoods turn their back to, looking inwards towards their centers instead of outwards towards different cultures.

The idea behind Beirut Caoutchouc  is to have a map somewhere in-between the paper map that we look at as spectators, and the real city that swallows us when we walk inside it. I wanted to make a city that one can see as a whole and participate in. In 2003 when I worked on the project, I knew the city very well but all the maps I could find at that time about Beirut never showed the actual zoning of the sectors.

The Electricity of Lebanon divided Beirut into fifty-nine sectors marked by a blue sign on each street. I walked all around the city, following the blue signs, and marking the lines that divided one sector from the other, starting from number 11 (Nejmeh). Basically, I would see a sector name on a blue sign, then cross the street and find out another sector name. This would mean that this street is the border between two sectors. Sometimes, at intersections, there would be three different sector names, like in Sassine for example, which is divided between Sioufi, Mar Mitr, and Achrafieh.

I imagined Beirut Caoutchouc before starting to make it, the size and the material I would use. Working with materials from the city, I was looking at something similar to gymnasium mats, and used black rubber. I wanted Beirut on the floor so people could get a sense of intimacy, so they could get on their knees and search for a specific location. I also wanted them to learn about it, understanding each neighborhood and its borders – making connections.

​​​​​​Veni, Vidi, Vici, 2013

Inspired by the Nahr-el-Kalb site situated north of Beirut, Veni, Vidi, Vici includes one thousand perfect marble cubes, randomly stacked in a monticule that refers to the mountain-shaped cliff directly overlooking that particular point on the coast of Lebanon.

The site represents a historical strategic passageway, that allowed conquerors to access the region’s inner-lands: arriving by sea and mooring in the adjacent creek, they could follow with their armies a narrow footpath, that ran parallel to the river flowing into the sea at that point. An easy spot to guard and fortify, it has witnessed several battles, and the passage of many expeditions over the centuries: it does not only control the routes between East and West, but also the North-South coastal axis.

Twenty-six of the one thousand marble cubes presented in the work are engraved with the names of conquerors who have left carvings within the rocks above Nahr el Kalb river: from Pharaoh Ramses II who marched through Lebanon some 3,000 years ago, to the twentieth centuries stelae commemorating events such as the victories of British troops in Damascus in 1919 and 1930 or the one marking the evacuation of foreign armies from Lebanon on December 31, 1946: Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, Assyrian king Esarhaddon, the Roman’s third Gallic Legion under Emperor Caracalla, Byzantine Governor Proclus, Napoleon II’s French expedition corps, Mameluke Sultan Barqouq, Ottoman Mutassarif Wassa Pasha, and French General Gouraud are all among the leaders who left their mark.

The cubic shaped grey stones composing the sculpture look like pavement stones, and directly refer to the paths walked by invaders; but also, to the routes connecting the lands beyond the Arabian deserts to the Mediterranean Sea.

Keeping a record of times, dumped in bulk, the marble cubes safekeep the engravings that are slowly disappearing from the rocks over Nahr el Kalb, eroded by the sea wind and exposed to the elements of Nature. The work also brings forward questions of multiple identities, remainders of cultural inheritance received from generations of invaders who came through over the centuries.