Bringing together recent textile and video work by Lebanese/Dutch artist Mounira Al Solh, the exhibition focuses around two themes central to Al Solh’s practice; the violent and sometimes absurd force of political events on personal lives, and the form and function of language and meaning-making. The works on display include My speciality was to make a peasants’ haircut, but they obliged me work till midnight often (2017), a series of hand and machine stitched embroideries featuring excerpts from conversations between the artist and refugees in Lebanon and Europe. An earlier video work by the artist, Rawane’s Song (2006), is a playful meditation on the role of the artist in relation to politics and history.

Artist’s Rooms

Drawn largely from the Art Jameel Collection, Artist’s Rooms is a series of solo exhibitions by influential, innovative artists, with particular focus on practitioners from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. These capsule presentations are collaborative: curated in dialogue with the artist, with some presentations including new commissions. Winter 2018-19 features rooms by Maha Malluh, Mounira Al Solh, Lala Rukh and Chiharu Shiota in galleries 1, 2, 3 and 10.

About artist Mounira Al Solh

Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978) lives and works between Amsterdam, Netherlands and Beirut, Lebanon.

Mounira Al Solh’s practice embraces painting, embroidery, performative gestures, video and video installations. Irony and self-reflectivity are central strategies for her work, which explores feminist issues, tracks patterns of microhistory, is socially engaged, and can be political and escapist all at once.

Al Solh studied at the Lebanese University (Beirut), the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam), and was resident at the Rijksakademie (Amsterdam, 2007-8).

Her most recent exhibitions include solos at the Art Institute, Chicago (2018), SALT, Istanbul (2016), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014), plus participation in dOCUMENTA 14, Athens & Kassel (2017); 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); New Museum, New York (2014); Homeworks, Beirut (2013); and the 2009 Istanbul Biennial. Mounira is represented by Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut and Hamburg.