One year after the explosion of August 4, 2020 which devastated the port of Beirut, the Arab World Institute pays tribute to the vitality and resilience of the Lebanese artistic scene.
With the exhibition Lights of Lebanon-Modern and Contemporary Art from 1950 to today (September 21, 2021 – January 2, 2022), the IMA celebrates the prodigious creativity of modern and contemporary artists from Lebanon and its diasporas, the day after its independence in 1943 until today, with works by Shafic Abboud, Etel Adnan, Saliba Douaihy, Paul Guiragossian, Hussein Madi, Assadour, Chaouki Choukini, Ayman Baalbaki, Zad Moultaka, Serwan Baran, Hala Matta, Hiba Kalache, Zena Assi or Tagreed Darghouth. On this occasion, the IMA will inaugurate a brand new exhibition and training space: “The Donors’ Circle”.
More than a hundred works by 55 artists are revealed for the occasion, underlines the IMA.
They were selected from the collection of modern and contemporary Arab art of the IMA, the largest in Europe (with its collection of nearly 600 Lebanese works) since its merger with the major donation of Claude and France Lemand in 2018, constantly enriched donation since then.
“With Lights of Lebanon, the Institute of the Arab World expresses its full solidarity with the Lebanese people, and its world of arts and culture”, explains Jack Lang, president of the IMA.
Claude Lemand adds that the exhibition “testifies to the luminous face of another Lebanon, that of its artists and its creators. It shows how big this small country is, and how much, despite its misfortunes, the victims and the crisis, it remains the human and cultural melting pot that it has always been ”.
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