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拍品專文
Artist Zena Assi’s works contain strong visual references to her native Beirut and depicts deep complexities of contemporary city life found within its chaotic landscape. A beautiful depiction of the Beirut metropolis, My City #6 acknowledges the dynamic energies and bonds between the city and its inhabitants, taking into consideration the many layers peculiar to its universality.
Using the city’s infrastructure as the central subject within her oeuvre, she places careful attention to detail developing a multi-layered composition, laden with buildings, billboards and electricity wires adjacent to colourful graffiti and posters. In the present scene, Assi finds the point of intersection between when the city merges between singularity and plurality, forming an undefined body of matter. Opening a larger question of modern life and one’s search for identity within the masses, her work is a testament to the city fabric as inextricably linked to the its inhabitants.
Amidst the largely monochrome, claustrophobic and congested scene, the artist includes potted plants and trees and hanging laundry, symbolizing the quaint residential side to Beirut—it is home. Much of her oeuvre contains references to larger socio-political references, and the emotional, social and cultural baggage carried with its structures. My City #6 showcases billboard signs stating ‘BEIRUT,’ ‘WAR’ and ‘ART,’ which identify with all social classes, whether through the atrocities of war or the celebrated heritage and history of its people.
Assi’s oeuvre involves a diverse range of medium including installation, animation, sculpture and painting. Her latest body of work focuses on city’s adaptation to migrants and refugees and the ensuing shifting city landscape, focusing in particular to the emotional and cultural baggage one carries when uprooting. Most recently the artist participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale at the Grenada Pavilion, presenting her works reflecting on the refugee crisis within the region.
Using the city’s infrastructure as the central subject within her oeuvre, she places careful attention to detail developing a multi-layered composition, laden with buildings, billboards and electricity wires adjacent to colourful graffiti and posters. In the present scene, Assi finds the point of intersection between when the city merges between singularity and plurality, forming an undefined body of matter. Opening a larger question of modern life and one’s search for identity within the masses, her work is a testament to the city fabric as inextricably linked to the its inhabitants.
Amidst the largely monochrome, claustrophobic and congested scene, the artist includes potted plants and trees and hanging laundry, symbolizing the quaint residential side to Beirut—it is home. Much of her oeuvre contains references to larger socio-political references, and the emotional, social and cultural baggage carried with its structures. My City #6 showcases billboard signs stating ‘BEIRUT,’ ‘WAR’ and ‘ART,’ which identify with all social classes, whether through the atrocities of war or the celebrated heritage and history of its people.
Assi’s oeuvre involves a diverse range of medium including installation, animation, sculpture and painting. Her latest body of work focuses on city’s adaptation to migrants and refugees and the ensuing shifting city landscape, focusing in particular to the emotional and cultural baggage one carries when uprooting. Most recently the artist participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale at the Grenada Pavilion, presenting her works reflecting on the refugee crisis within the region.