2015 » Lebanon » Student Section
Curator: | Hadi Damien |
Designer / Architect of exhibition: | Studio GHAITH&JAD |
A Trail of Ten
The Student Section of Lebanon is a spatial experience that invites the visitor to walk a promenade on a bed of dried leaves, in a forest of white planes, where people walk between suspended scenic visuals while observing each other.
The Student Section of Lebanon is a spatial experience that breaks the linear rhythm of Kafka’s House with a series of exhibition rooms. It distorts one’s sense of orientation, warps the perspective of the established, repetitive rooms and throws the visitor into a space dissected by planes.
At each of the three room entrances, the audience is faced with a blank oblique partition that hides what is within. On following the path traced by these planes, the visitor finds themself walking along other blank partitions featuring cutouts, the frames of which show parts from persons walking behind. This playful maze invites visitors to the section to observe each other, creating a living exhibition layer. Delving deeper into the room, the visitor goes the length of the partition walls and encounters the second layer of the exhibition: a series of images depicting student performances and collaborations and hung on the existing walls of the house.
The mute partitions emerge from an organic bed of dried cedar leaves, condensing the experience and linking it to the Lebanese natural identity. The framed moving elements that border the walk depict a Lebanese landscape, with an abstract cedar forest and its aroma, adding much intrigue to the promenade.
The section design reflects the characteristic of ‚curiosity‘, a Lebanese trait often highlighted in hospitable, welcoming neighborhoods and citizens - fertile ground for venturing out and discovering ‚social finds and treasures‘. In these close-knit neighborhoods and small villages, inhabitants know each other and form a big family/community where it is difficult for people to act without others being witnesses to it. The section thus creates a layer of intimacy between visitors, who can constantly observe one another in a playful atmosphere.
Lebanese University
American Univeristy of Beirut
Lebanese American of Beirut
Université Saint-Joseph
Balamand University – Académie libanaise des beaux-arts