Ayyam Gallery Beirut is pleased to present Depths, the first solo exhibition of photographic and cinemagraphic works by Lebanese artist Lara Zankoul.

The compositions of Lara Zankoul are contemporary fairy tales, which explore the charm and mystery of the human psyche. Whimsical and playful, they represent an attempt to invent new worlds, to push against the boundaries of our reality and escape the monotony of everyday life. The characters inhabiting Zankoul’s work are anonymous and timeless, universal symbols existing within a fantastical and surreal landscape.

The exhibition will comprise a series of ten photographs exploring the role of surrealism and dreams in the construction of our reality. In Drown in Her Dreams a woman sleeps on a bed adrift in the sea, peaceful and unaware that she lies on a dangerous surface full of secrets. Birds depicts bowties fluttering through the air, free from their owner who watches from below. In Excess, a girl engages in the futile task of watering the sea. Like other works in the exhibition, these images, with their distorted perspective on the natural order, space and time, serve to challenge the role of photography as a means of capturing truth in the world.

Also on display will be a series of cinemagraphs - still images incorporating an element with movement - which further play with our understanding of what is real and unreal. The absurdist surrealism of Generations features tea cascading down a successive series of teapots in an elegant dance before finally filling a teacup below. Heartbeat presents a young woman clad in white holding a butterfly trapped within a glass jar upon her lap. The wings of the butterfly beat continuously in this still world, while the colors pervading the piece - the red lacquer of her fingernails, vivid azure of the insect and the overwhelmingly white ground - are symbolic and suggestive of a bottled hope. In Gossiper, four seemingly inanimate teapots hang down from the ceiling. On closer inspection, the gentle swaying to and fro of one teapot becomes apparent, breathing life into the otherwise static image.

About the Artist:

Born in Lebanon in 1987, Lara Zankoul lives and works in Beirut. She has participated in group exhibitions within the Middle East and France. Part of the Shabab Ayyam incubator programme, she was an award recipient at the 2011 Shabab Ayyam Photography Competition.

Image: © Lara Zankou, Ayyam Gallery