Following the opening of the exhibition Place at Last, Walid Sadek raises issues and seeks debate on art, the political and a non-vengeful cohabitation with a past that does not pass.

Born in 1966, Walid Sadek is an artist and writer living in Beirut. His early work investigates the violent legacies of the Lebanese civil war as partially and inadequately seen and experienced by a young Christian-born Lebanese: I Once Dreamt I was a Phoenix (1995); Half-a-Man (1995); Home Play (1996); The Last Days of Summer (1997). He later began to posit, mostly in theoretical texts, ways of understanding the complexity of lingering civil strife in times of relative social and economical stability: A Matter of Words (2002); From Excavation to Dispersion: Configurations of Installation Art in Post-War Lebanon  (2003); The Acquisition of Death: the Ends of Art and Dwelling in Lebanon (2004). His recent written work endeavors to structure a theory for a post-war society disinclined to resume normative living: From Image to Corpse (2006); Place at Last (2007); Seeing Rude and Erudite (2007); Peddling Time When Standing Still; art remains in Lebanon and the globalization that was (2009). Concomitantly, a number of installations propose a poetics for a social experience governed by uneasy contiguity with the remnants and consequences of violence: Love is Blind (2006); Dear Stephen (2006); Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse (2007); Learning to See Less (2009).

Walid Sadek is currently associate professor at the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut.