‘Material Remains’ Exhibition at Ayyam Gallery

Attend “Material Remains,” a joint exhibition by veteran painter and sculptor, Ginane Makki Bacho alongside newcomer Fathallah Zamroud.

Featuring a twelve-part steel architectural installation amid modern Impressionist style canvases, “Material Remains” displays each artist’s unique engagement with the brutal reality of war and their individual response to its aftermath. In Zamroud’s canvases, the thick and gestural application of paint gives way to a landscape representing the misery of Syrian refugee camps. For Makki Bacho, her installation takes as its focal point the iconic Burj El Murr, a concrete tower in downtown Beirut designed to be a state of the art trade center, whose fate was to be a stronghold for sniper and militiamen during the civil wars.

Makki Bacho has diligently created her mixed steel installations over the last two years. The subject matter which she engages is older still. The Burj El Murr remains tethered to a difficult past around which other towers have cropped up in the vicinity and elsewhere. However, for a Beiruti, the significance of this tower cannot be replaced by any other. Like the landscape in which the Burj El Murr sits, within the gallery space the audience is confronted with not one, but multiple Matryoshka-like steel replicas of the original. The multiple iterations of the tower reflect the various moments this tower and its violent history have impacted the artist’s life and memory.

Opening reception:
Thursday, April 3 from 7:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.