Akram Zaatari

An extraordinary event

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Artwork Details

Artist

Akram Zaatari

Title

An extraordinary event

Date

2018

Medium

Eight inkjet photographs

Dimensions

35 x 46 cm each

Credit Line

Art Jameel Collection

Work Description

A key element of Akram Zaatari’s practice is working with photographic archives to interrogate the writing of history, the circulation of imagery and the production of meaning, particularly in relation to film and photography. He is an avid collector and researcher of photographs, often intervening on the images themselves to enable a more complex reading of historical moments. 

In the series An Extraordinary Event (2018), Zaatari has gathered eight photographs taken in 1887 in a citrus grove in south Lebanon by Osman Hamdi Bey, an Ottoman statesman, painter and art expert, known for putting forth legislation aimed at regulating finds made by various archaeological enterprises in the Ottoman Empire. The photographs document the discovery and excavation of 19 Phoenician sarcophagi before they were swiftly dispatched to Istanbul and these photographs are the only known record of this moment. 

As a piece of documentary evidence, Zaatari highlights the location and details of the discovery, with pieces of stone, rope and the wooden planks used to raise the revered objects clearly on view. In one the sarcophagus remains in the cave it was found in while in another, big trenches of earth form a pathway for the sarcophagus to be moved along a rudimentary track. An important feature of the photographs are the workers and diggers present in the background of the photographs, which notably include children. Conversely, details of the central objects are obscured, radiated by white light in an act of erasure by Zaatari. The sarcophagi take on a ghostly quality, fitting given that they were not supposed to be seen by the living.

Artist Biography

Akram Zaatari (b.1966, Sidon, Lebanon) lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon

Akram Zaatari has produced more than fifty films and videos, a dozen books, and countless installations of photographic material. All of his work shares an interest in writing histories as well as pursuing a range of interconnected themes, subjects, and practices related to but not limited to: excavation, political resistance, the lives of former militants, the legacy of an exhausted left and the circulation of images in times of war. Zaatari has played a critical role in developing the formal, intellectual, and institutional infrastructure of Beirut’s contemporary art scene. As a co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, he has made invaluable and uncompromising contributions to the wider discourse on preservation and archival practice. Zaatari represented Lebanon at the Venice Biennale (2013). His work has been a part of major biennials such as Documenta13 (2012) and the Istanbul Biennial (2015).He has also featured in solo and group exhibitions at institutions worldwide, and is part of major institutional collections such as MUSAC, León, Spain; Tate, London; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; MCA Chicago; and MoMA, New York.

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