Artist Walid Raad (b. 1967, Lebanon) will deliver a lecture this Wednesday, February 22 in Taylor 203 at 5:30pm. Using various media, including photography, video, sculpture, and performance, Raad’s work is “dedicated to exploring the veracity of photographic and video documents in the public realm, the role of memory and narrative within discourses of conflict, and the construction of histories of art in the Arab world” (MoMA site). Raad’s experiences of living in Lebanon during the civil war (1975–91), and of the various socioeconomic and military policies that have shaped the Middle East over the last few decades, have had an immense effect on his work.
Raad’s works include The Atlas Group, a fifteen-year project between 1989 and 2004 about the contemporary history of Lebanon, and the ongoing projects Scratching on Things I Could Disavow and Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut). Both The Atlas Group and Scratching on things I could disavow were featured in an exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art from October 2015 through January 2016.
Operator #17/The Atlas Group, I Only Wish That I Could Weep, 1999–2002, color video.
Source: BOMB Magazine
A Professor of Art in The Cooper Union, Raad has published several books, including Walkthrough, The Truth Will Be Known When The Last Witness Is Dead, My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair, Let’s Be Honest The Weather Helped, and Scratching on Things I Could Disavow.
Dr. Fadl Fakhouri/The Atlas Group, Notebook Volume 38, plate 60, Already Been in a Lake of Fire, 1975–2002. All photos courtesy of The Atlas Group/Ra’ad, 2002.
Source: BOMB Magazine
