Around exposure 5

Beirut art center is pleased to present a selection of videos produced by artists participating in exposure 2013. Monira Al Qadiri

Wa waila (oh torment), 2008, 10 minutes, Arabic with English subtitles “Wa waila” (oh torment) is a surreal film based on an old Kuwaiti folk song, whose words are almost like a trance of recurring tragedy and self-pity. The lyrics of the song are visually interpreted to create a music-video like atmosphere. It depicts love lost, displacement, gender identity, and death in a poetic, but also kitsch style. The men and women in the film are all in opposite roles and the artists plays the part of the main male singer.

Malayeen

Shirin Abu Shaqra

Conversations with changes, 2010, 12 minutes, Arabic. Production le fresnoy studio national des arts contemporain it is a journey in an imaginary city; a heterotopia within which one comes across fragments of events away from history books, parts of lives too small to figure in oral history, too small even to figure in the never written history of losers. I see a photograph, I imagine… this time, I imagined men, women, but also a child-statue and a lamp post.