Artist’s Note: Where Do I Go?
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon still suffers its consequences. After years of brutal Civil War, corrupt governments, months of Covid-19 lockdown; the 2020 Port of Beirut explosions further plunged Lebanon into the abyss and total economic meltdown, with shortages of cash, gas, electricity, medicine, and water.
However, I found hope and inspiration in the young generation of women who were volunteering in the reconstruction after the explosions and I chose to focus on their majestic presence, creativity, strength, dignity, and resilience to collaborate with them and tell their story– our collective story– the story of modern Lebanon through the eyes of a woman and about women growing up in the fraught conditions that are part of the collective experience of the past 50 years.
Every picture has a narrative. The women, the land, the architecture are intertwined.
I see my younger self in these women. I feel their hopes, pains, dreams, fears, dilemmas. I was their age when I left Lebanon, many are now at that same juncture, in 1984 during the Civil War in what had been the largest wave of emigration, until now.
(Click the photos to enlarge)
