Walid Raad

A class conversation about Walid Raad has got me thinking. 

While discussing The Atlas Group (www.theatlasgroup.org) and the way which the project uses the formal language of the archive, I wondered whether his work was ever shown in Beirut? It occurred to me that the poignant humour of The Atlas Group makes a lot of sense to an elitist art audience in the West, but I wondered how it played to the viewing public in Beirut, if ever shown there. I was also curious about what the language of archive being used means there and the distance between the interpretations of The Atlas Group's work between its two homes.

Turns out it is currently showing in Beirut! [http://www.sfeir-semler.com/gallery-artists/the-atlas-group-walid-raad/ and [http://www.sfeir-semler.com/beirut/current-exhibition.html] It is more often shown with galleries in Europe than Lebanon and the rest of the region, but what I have read no longer leads me to attribute this to an audience problem. What I have found, instead of an example of art world bias was an example of my own. In looking into this I found myself conducting a (highly unscientific) quantitative analysis of where Raad has shown and scouring articles about his shows trying to create a statistical picture to back up my original theory. What I found instead was that I have little idea of what the arts look like in the Middle East beyond my own assumptions.

Art Forum describe the current improbable growth of the Beirut contemporary art scene thus:

There are more artists, galleries, and nonprofit arts organizations than ever before. Initiatives that began as youthful ambitions and scattershot plans have matured into more or less sustainable institutions. Patrons and financial backers both clean and questionable have begun filtering into the system, offering various forms of funding and support. And still the quality of critical discourse remains bracingly high. “It’s becoming impossible to live here,” the curator Ghada Waked told me two weeks ago, as we were standing outside the opening of a splashy new gallery in Mar Mikhael. “But there is still something about Beirut. There is an urgency to the issues and the discussion of ideas that you don’t find anywhere else. — Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

The article surprised me into acknowledging the extent of my euro-centric bias. I started researching this post looking for proof that Raad’s work only functioned for a Western elite, not because of any cynicism in his work but because of my own assumption that there was no ‘art elite’ in Lebanon to receive the work.  (The idea of art being made for an elite still holds issues for me but that’s for another day.) I am amazed how often this is happening to me recently. I am experiencing a profound and occasionally uncomforatble unpicking of bias since starting my MA. And I couldn’t be happier.