In the scarred backdrop of Beirut's port blast, art helps the healing process
4 min read
Homes, restaurants, bars andart galleries have always been an important part of the vibrant structure of Mar Mikhael, one of the neighbourhoods most affected by Beirut's.Less than a year later andafter spending months on reconstruction and reviving their love of art, the area is ready to reopen.
Under the theme of Togetherness,openedits doors to the public in June in hopes of healing and movingforward after building, severely injured several employees and killed the building’s architect Jean-Marc Bonfils.
“The day before the opening, there were still workers inside,”communications and project officer Elige Abou Youness told . “The decision to open again wasn’t hard. As a team, we decided that what we need is to come back and restart the work. And after the explosion, in the midst of the pandemic and the financial crisis, all that matters is to be together.”
The team, therefore, decided to launch an open call under the theme to exploreways that people can be connected. They received61 applications within a month, of which they selected 17 to be exhibited in June. Eliesh, one of the artists, showed a video on the from the perspective of people’s feet, walking together, while two photographers chose to highlight by showing how much it was worth at each phase.
“It’s very important to be here and together, a concept that was challenged with everything that happened in Lebanon in the past two years,” Abou Youness said. “It was definitely hard to be back in a space that was destroyed and where people died but it’s also. We work hard for that message–stopping is not an option.”
The Tanit Gallery has relied on its own funds to rebuild, just like most spaces around them that didn’t get any help from the government or their insurance company. It is the same fate that suffered.
Marfa’, which means port in Arabic, shared a wall with the port and three of its walls had to be removed and rebuilt. Their office was also completely crushed. “Luckily we were off that week ,” the gallery's director Laetitia Zalloum told .
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They reopened in May with a group exhibition, gathering almost all their artists. “The owner said from day one that we would reopen, but it was very challenging because of the , there was a lot of delays,” Zalloum recalled. “In the end, the artists really pushed for us to go forward and continue. It’s not the same as before, but I feel that people want to come back to exhibitions and galleries.”
Most of the galleries continued working during that time, remotely, in other spaces or through international events and networks. Some also held fundraising exhibitions, like Tanit which hada for anartist who had lost his work when the explosion happened.
held a fundraising event in December 2020 but in a smaller space than the one they used to occupy. The gallery was completely destroyed by the explosion and is now rebuilt, but has become too expensivefor the organisation to rent as it was already struggling because of the financial crisis.
“We relocated in a small space behind the gallery, where we also have a workshop,”artist Tarek Mourad, who works with Artlab, told . “Antoine [Haddad, the owner] wanted to close down at first, but we decided instead to .”
Artlab has now turned to a new model of work based on helping newcomer artists who didn’t have a chance to exhibit before and allowing them to display their art through open calls. “Doing what we used to doesn’t work in times of crisis,”Mourad said. “We just hope that we will be able to exhibit soon, which has been hard to plan due to the ongoing health situation."
More than anything, what matters to , even if it has become less vibrant than two years before.
“It is important that we stay here so that this social fabric doesn’t disappear,” Zalloum concludes. “At the end of the day, we have to continue, because that’s what we do.”
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Florence Massena is a freelance journalist based in Norway after six years spent in Lebanon. She reports on the environment, women's issues, human rights and refugees in the Middle East, Africa and Europe
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