The Trace of a Trace: Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Location: Auditorium

Moderated by Koyo Kouoh

Whatever medium they work in, what Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige create is ontologically photographic. At the end of the Lebanese Civil War, making images became necessary to hold onto and interrogate the traces of a Beirut marked by years of conflict and beginning to undergo rapid reconstruction. From 1988 to 1997, they photographed the city as it went through a radical transformation, asking themselves: How can a city be depicted after a civil war? How can a ruin be photographed without yielding to the temptation to beautify? What kinds of images can be powerful? Rather than producing images of violence, their approach queries what war does to images—and how it profoundly transforms how we look at things and at ourselves.

Artists and filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige investigate the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of contemporary history. Their work builds thematic and formal links between photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, and documentary and fiction film. Films such as Memory Box (2021), The Lebanese Rocket Society (2012), I Want to See (Je veux voir, 2008), and A Perfect Day (2005) trace stories of the invisible and absent, from the missing people of the Lebanese Civil War to forgotten space projects and geological and archaeological cores

Language: English