Ayyam Gallery Beirut presents Material Remains a joint exhibition of veteran painter and sculptor, Ginane Makki Bacho alongside newcomer Fathallah Zamroud.

Featuring a twelve-part steel architectural installation amidst 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 centre, whose fate was to be a stronghold for sniper and militiamen during the civil wars.

Zamroud’s earthy-toned canvases depict temporary dwellings of refugee camps and discarded belongings, bringing to centre the makeshift nature of life after war. In one painting, orange and brown dominate a desolate alleyway, littered only by windswept garbage and the inanimate. Devoid of figures, Zamroud’s paintings lay bare the state of places where people have fled or been forced to evacuate.

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.

Zamroud’s canvases with their monochromatic colours, gestural brushstrokes and fluid lines provide a direct contrast to Makki Bacho’s city of steel, so abrupt, rigid and non-conforming. Yet as a singular viewing experience, the two bodies of work resonate together; providing audiences the opportunity to reflect upon the aftereffects of war and its material remains.

For the tangible marks that remain after tragedy are upon the buildings, residences and locations, which serve as testament not only to bloodshed and strife, but also to perseverance and determination.

-Ayyam Gallery Beirut

Image: © Ginane Makki Bacho
Courtesy of the artist and Ayyam Gallery