The liquid condition of being stateless—whether as a refugee, a migrant, or a individual living on occupied territories—means that one’s life begins to revolve around questions: questions of where to go, how to act, what to claim, who the opposition is, who oneself is. In Lebanese-Dutch artist Mounira Al Solh‘s work, these inquiries are given vivid sonic and visual resonances, in the dizzying and hypnotic shot of a boat swaying back and forth, in the slow panning over an animal’s exposed ribcage, in a man that continually raises a foot to step forward or backward, before returning it to its place. Working with her own narrative of migrating from Beirut to Damascus as a child, and overlaying it with a contemplative blend of cultural archive, enactment, and linguistic sensitivity, Al Solh places a beating heart in the centre of displacement’s immense, abstracted web, illustrating not only origins or destinations, but the individual in the middle of becoming.
In any case, in the year 2006, as I was finishing my studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, I made a video piece, Rawane’s Song, in which I stated that “I have nothing to say about the war,” meaning the Lebanese civil war. At that time, everyone expected Lebanese artists to speak about that war. It was also generational, as people who grew up during the Lebanese civil war found the only way to survive was by not speaking about the war, but about survival instead. When I was a young teen, I had the privilege to live the changes that occurred on the ground in Lebanon, the abrupt and absurd end of fifteen years of civil war, and the shift to a postwar time (or perhaps to a suspended civil cold war, as some people called it).
Ironically, when I had finished making Rawane’s Song there was a war again in the summer, when Israel invaded Lebanon and bombed its bridges in a fight against Hezbollah, who had kidnapped a couple of soldiers to tease and provoke Israel. After this war, fighting factions would strengthen and become more popular. Anyway, at that time, I did not refrain from showing Rawane’s Song, and I did not refrain from taking a highly ironical position towards “speaking about the war,” even though we were being bombed and the country was devastated.
On top of that, when Syrians started to come en masse to Lebanon, the Lebanese people were still traumatized from the civil war. For many, it was difficult to distinguish between the Lebanese war days, the Syrian army, and the Syrians escaping the war in Syria—mostly those against the Syrian army, and those being killed and persecuted by the Syrian regime, but of course also at times by ISIS and other fighting factions.
So this is where my project started: but I had huge doubts about how to be involved and if I should be involved at all because of my position as someone who was born and grew up during the Lebanese civil war.
It was by re-reading Mahmoud Darwish, the amazing Palestinian poet, that I was liberated. I read a touching interview in BOMB magazine in which he speaks about the impossibility of writing about existential matters while under siege. I understood, then, that my position of “not to talk about the war” is irrelevant: there is no position to take, we are in the middle of things, we have to act. I had to act. And if I didn’t act, I would not be able to live. The scale of the disaster is only roaring bigger, even if Lebanon is now a safer place, but we can’t sleep at night, constantly watching the disaster nearby on our phones and laptops, witnessing the disaster each second by watching the faces of the people who escaped, and by carving a growing visible wall between Syrian newcomers and the Lebanese. I wanted to break through that wall.
When I was young, also after the first years of the end of the Lebanese civil war, maybe around 1996, Darwish was invited to speak and read his poetry at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut, which is near the Mar Elias Palestinian camp and not too far from the Sabra and Chetila camps. I won’t forget how the streets were closed, and thousands of people walked to the stadium, at sundown, to listen to Darwish speak in the dark. The streets of Beirut were still dark during those days, still affected by the war. When Darwish utters his poetry, it’s about breaking the Arabic traditional measures; it’s about using a modern language affected by how the Palestinians have been scattered globally after being kicked out of their country. It is about the scattered homeland, but it is also about love, the beloved one, passion, birds, sounds, music, rhythm.
My work is a collection of hundreds of encounters, captured by writing and by drawing the moments with each individual and family I met; they capture the mood and the content of our conversations. The work indirectly reflects the war, displacement, detention. In the conversations, we spoke about Syria before, during, and after the Revolution, about love, divorce, big ideas as well as the tiniest details of daily life, about nothing as well.
In Arabic, we say the “mother language,” not the “mother tongue.” According to Jacques Aswad, a philosopher, poet, art critic, and translator, “mother tongue” is a relatively new concept, which was first “brought” to the Arabic language in the twentieth century by Kamal Youssef el Hage. Because Arabs did not consider “other tongues,” maybe, so there was no concept of “mother tongue” . . .
Jacques Aswad accepted my invitation to give a talk during a solo show I had in Beirut at Sfeir-Semler gallery. The title of the show was All Mother Tongues are Difficult. Jacques spoke about Kamal Youssef el Hage. (He had been killed, but his family members attended that talk, which was very special.) Another talk was by Ahmad Beydoun, who had written in the eighties an article titled “Kalamon,” in which he studies the origins of the Arabic letters. I also made works based on “Kalamon” and his research into the origins of the Arabic letters.
Going back to “tongue” as opposed to “language,” I think that the tongue is the immediate tool of oral language. My video The Mute Tongue reflects on the concept of “mother tongue” and the impact of mother tongues on people’s visual “luggage.” One of the Arabic proverbs I reenacted was “Hair grew on my tongue.” This phrase refers to the experience of repeating things over and over again but no one understands or listens to you. The image of the tongue is an embodiment of language; in this case, there is hair that grew on that tongue, as if to obstruct its glittery, slippery texture, to make the words unclear or inaudible.
Read the full feature in our Summer 2018 issue.
Mounira Al Solh studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut, and fine arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. She was also a research resident at the Rijksakademie between 2006 and 2008. She has had solo exhibitions at the Art Institute Chicago (2018); ALT, Istanbul (2016); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014); Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut (2014); Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2013); Art in General, New York (2012); and Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2011). Group shows include documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); New Museum, New York (2014); Homeworks, Beirut (2013); House of Art, Munich (2010); and the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009).
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