Shifting Lights Exhibition
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Scope
ARCHITECTURE & INTERIORS:
Concept Design, Design Development, Execution Drawings, and Construction Supervision.
EXHIBITIONS:
Exhibition Management & Curation; Scenography & Art Installation;
PUBLICATIONS:
Monographs & Editorial Design; Printing Management.
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Collaborators
Afaf Zurayk, Artist
Noel Nasr, Photography
Rami Saab, Architect
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Location
Biet Beirut, Lebanon
“Shifting Lights’ exhibition, a search for peace and redemption by Lebanese artists.
Unlike with regular exhibitions, visitors to “Shifting Lights” at Beit Beirut were not mere viewers of art but had a choice to become participants in a conversation that explored the artist’s experiences of turbulence in Lebanon and the region.”
— The Arab Weekly
Shifting Lights is a collaborative exhibition that invites viewers to become participants in a conversation that explores our collective experiences of turbulence in Lebanon and the region. With nuanced shifting of light and space, both physical and emotive, our contemplative discourse comes to life through nine structures that layer presence and memory, oscillating between reality and aspiration.
The collaboration centred on the coming together of three artists: Afaf Zurayk, a painter, Noel Nasr, a photographer, and Twig’s Rami Saab, an architect, all of whom witnessed distinct artistic, political, and social changes and upheavals, yet remain connected by a vision of peace and honest introspection.
Twig Collaborative worked to realize the vision of the artists. By designing and bringing this exhibition to life, we sought to reconcile the space and its wounded past, with the exhibition and its trustful call. The challenge was to conceive of an installation that would reconcile Beit Beirut and its wounded past, with Afaf’s paintings and Noel’s photographs. The answer came in the form of nine cylindrical structures, each with a painting on the inside, enveloped by a photograph on the outside. As we move between the seemingly translucent structures, we wander through a forest where light is elusive.
Both together and alone, we confront our solitude in search of our deepest self. Once within, both structure and self, our humanity begins to unfold in all of its complexity as we ask: “Why?” Inside, sheltered, yet on display, the artist and the viewer, the questioner and the questioned, become one. As collective confrontation makes way for individual responses, we are left to face our conscience.
The installation is inspired by strokes recovered from Afaf’s paintings and projected into space. Following Noel’s photographs forming the outer translucent walls of each structure, viewers, now as participants, move inwards and outwards, treading physically and emotively between the personal and the collective. Conceived of as individual spaces of confrontation and introspection, each structure, seemingly opaque from within, allows for an intimate experience between person and painting. Shifting between the magnified details in the photographs, and the experience of the whole in the paintings, the installation surrenders to intangible forces that bridge, connect, and nurture
Groundless and suspended, the nine structures, along with the nine paintings they envelope, hang precariously. As effigies, they stand together to address our personal and collective narratives of violence, displacement, and loss. Each structure, akin to a light-filled beacon in a forest, attracts, dissipates, and guides us towards the other. Through muted layering of photograph, painting, and space, they capture a moment of conscientious reproach as they stand witness to what we have done to the world and to one another.
