Works
Under-Writing Beirut — Ouzai (2017-2018)
Multimedia Works
Digital prints, texts, drawings and sculpture
Under-Writing Beirut — Ouzai (2017-2018)
Under-Writing Beirut—Ouzai
Multimedia Works (Digital prints, texts, drawings and sculpture)
Under-Writing Beirut takes up the histories and dynamics of Ouzaï. For a long time, this area south of Beirut known as Roumoul (the dunes) was unoccupied and undefined. In the 1950s, as the city outgrew its ramparts, the land on its edges, useless for agriculture, became more valuable. The southern suburbs saw some substantial state investment as part of a growing, modernizing metropolis.
The first inhabitants of Ouzaï were almost all rural Lebanese driven towards Beirut by a changing economy. From the nineteenth century onward, the continual lack of legal clarity over the ownership of land in Ouzaï allowed the tension to fester in the 50’s, culminating in a trial, where it was finally decided that the land was private and not owned by the municipality of Bourj al Brajneh. This caused a spurt of informal (and, according to the trial’s decision, illegal) construction. The contested ownership, along with the weak regulatory power of the state and the fact that many properties were owned by a large number of co-owners, created a favorable ground for people who, looking for a better life near the capital or later fleeing the violence of the war, would settle there, most of them illegally.
The period preceding and during the Lebanese war saw a radical transformation of the area. The regular bombarding and then invasion of the southern villages of Lebanon by Israel led to the displacement of thousands of villagers, mainly Shias. Many of them first settled in Beirut’s eastern suburbs, before they were forced to flee again during the civil war, which led to the partition of the capital. They then settled in the Southern suburbs of the city, now commonly called ‘Dahiye’. As a result, the area saw the solidification of a Shia community, and a densification of informal, mainly illegal constructions in Ouzaï.
Today, the area is more heterogeneous than the common monolithic understanding of ‘Dahiye’ implies. Indeed, Ouzaï is a small area, which carries its own history, but somehow it encompasses the quintessence of what is facing all of Lebanon right now – issues of sectarian division, displacement, community, urban transformation, density of construction, inequality, reconciliation. What real or imagined narratives such a space triggers? How might art transcend or think outside of both stigmatizing and accusatory rhetorics?
The drawings Coastline are based on the topography of Ouzaï’s coastline in maps. The sand casted sculpture Ouzaï is inspired from and based on the mapping of the streets that constitute this area today, most of them were made without formal planning, in flux, often defined by rapid construction. Based on aerial photographs from the Lebanese Military and Zoom Earth, Ouzaï, Cartography of a Transformation propose a subjective, poetic visual interpretation of the transformation of Ouzaï over the years, from a sandy coastal mostly uninhabited area to a densely built and populated one. That history is narrated in A Brief History of Ouzaï through my encounters with several members and acquaintances of the Nasser family who were pioneer settlers in the 50s, depicting mundane and historic places that are enmeshed with the narratives of this area.