Mounira Al Solh - Pocket Rhythms
MOUNIRA AL SOLH
Pocket Rhythms
April 20 – August 19, 2023
hamburg
Aala al bahr, at the beach, 2023
Aala al bahr, at the beach, 2023
The exhibition also includes a textile installation, from Al Solh’s ongoing series of tent works, that are based on her collection of stories by and about women. The tents, a nod to the canopies powerful (male) rulers used to sit under, are assembled to create a secluded refuge, and all have names of the hours of the day or night embroidered at the top in Arabic calligraphy, alluding to the passing time. In this most recent version, the artist installs a beach parasol in the gallery space, with two beach chairs and a video work that exposes surreal situations, resulting from the harsh economic crisis that Lebanon is going through: snippets of people counting enormous amounts of devaluated Lebanese pounds alternate with views of the sea that is suffering from the consequential environmental crisis.
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13 April, 13 April, 13 April, 2020
13 April, 13 April, 13 April, 2020
A central aspect of Mounira Al Solh’s practice is a continuing recording of stories, those of displaced people, migrants, or wanderers, those of women who have fought oppressive systems, those of persons who went through ordeals, and lived to transmit this oral history to their children. However, for once, with the series 13 April, 13 April, 13 April the artist looks at herself instead, confronting her own vulnerabilities, intimate desires, hopes, and pain, using nudity as a radical act of self-examination. Drawn with ink and blood, the series is titled after the Lebanese civil war which broke out on April 13, 1975, the repeating date rising like a lament.
