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Art Art & Books

Bright light out of Lebanon

RABIH MROUÉ at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (401 Richmond West), to April 23, artist’s talk/performance 7:30 pm April 5. 416-591-0357. See listing. Rating: NNNNN


At this time of change in the Middle East, curator Scott McLeod shows unusual prescience by mounting The Inhabitants Of Images, an extraordinary exhibit by Beirut-based Rabih Mroué.

Working with archival material, memories and his own charismatic persona, Mroué, who came of age during the Lebanese civil war, takes a wry, indirect approach to representing political conflict.

In the mesmerizing I, The Undersigned, he stares from a monitor as he recites in voice-over a litany of apologies for actions more or less related to the war, keeping us riveted on his blank face while somehow communicating a range of intense emotions. Seeming at times to speak for himself and at times for others, he leaves us with questions about the value of apologies, the silence of those in power and the meaning of apologizing in the context of a Western audience.

Mroué mines print media in Noiseless, a video in which a gradually disappearing photo of the artist illustrates text from missing persons notices in Lebanese newspapers, and With Soul, With Blood, in which he tries in vain to find traces of himself in an old, grainy photo of a demonstration, commenting on time, memory and the transience and persistence of political passions.

Grandfather, Father And Son uses a more personal archive to tell an intergenerational tale of failure and perseverance: index cards exhibited on shelves didn’t help his grandfather locate books in his 8,000-volume library his father stubbornly completed an unpublished mathematical book, its pages displayed in cases, during Israeli bombings wall text tells us Mroué, who reads his short story on video, never wrote another after finding himself in the same situation as the family he describes, trapped in their apartment as their neighbourhood is shelled.

An actor and playwright, Mroué turned to performance art and video in part to fly under the radar of Lebanese government censorship. His powerful voice is the art world’s gain.

art@nowtoronto.com

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