+ The Sky ever So Blue
Presented at the Bastikya Art Fair in Dubai in 2009
The Sky ever So Blue is a series of collages juxtaposing two separate realities of the same country. Over the idyllic pre war Lebanon depicted in touristic postcards of the fifties and sixties, the most famous images of the civil war were restaged.
My grandfather Alfred Tarazi gradually lost his sight. By the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 he was already practically blind. Throughout his life, my grandfather had partaken and benefited from the Lebanese dream, its liberal economy and vibrant touristic activity. He had collected in red album colorful postcards of this Lebanon he had built, especially images of Beirut, its souks and its hotel district. These postcards today stand as the distant reminders of a reality that was completely shattered by the Lebanese Civil War. They are the ultimate objects of nostalgia, depictions of areas of a country that were systematically destroyed throughout the war. My father on the other hand collected images of the war: books, newspaper clippings, any material he could find to keep track and make sense of all the violence that was unfurling. At the time, it was a way to keep sane. As a young adult I inherited two sets of conflicting archives: my grandfathers postcards and my fathers war images, two realities of a country to which I was totally estranged. I did not inherit a country but images representing the dream of a country and images of a country at war. I could only have a country once these images reveal their secrets, once I find a way to lay claim to them.
