Akram Zaatari
‘Venus of Beirut’, 2022
3D routed, hand-polished Grey Bardiglio imperiale
52 x 51 x 4.5 cm.
20 1/2 x 20 x 1 3/4 in.
Farid Haddad was a medical doctor who practiced painting as a hobby. Some of his paintings still decorate the homes of his descendants in Lebanon. While researching nudity in 1998, Akram Zaatari came across a few transparencies of nude, overweight women, given to him by George Haddad, a grandnephew of Farid. Painting nudes was considered one of the Beaux-Arts traditions, respected in Lebanon, but posing nude in photographs was not common and would have been considered a disgrace for sitters. Some photography studios in the Middle East kept portfolios of female nudes to show to distinguished and open-minded clients as a practice of a “forbidden art”. Farid Haddad must have taken his photographs in the 1930s, at times when there was no photographic nude in the public sphere anywhere in the Arab world, whereas painting nudes was considered an accepted form of art.
To display these photographs today requires reflection, care and contextualisation. The transaction between a medical practitioner and a sex worker raises different ethical concerns today than it may have done in the Beirut of the 20s and 30s, and the photograph was likely never intended to be seen in public.
In 2018, Zaatari used this transparency as part of his work entitled ‘The Fold’, where the transparency was placed on an overhead projector, alluding to the fact that it might have been intended to be projected. In 2022 Zaatari finally decided to use this photograph as a reference to make an artwork that captures this story and tells it through a bas-relief that would not reveal the sex worker’s identity, and that would give her a name.
Exhibition:
Akram Zaatari
‘Father and Son’
23 April–13 July 2024
Thomas Dane Gallery
Via Francesco Crispi, 69
Napoli
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Images: Akram Zaatari, ‘Venus of Beirut’, 2022; ‘The Fold’, 2018 (details); Installation views, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples © Akram Zaatari. Photos: M3Studio.
![Akram Zaatari‘YM series’, 2024ink on mulberry paper36.6 x 60 cm. each14 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.The ‘YM series’ is comprised of six paintings that represent diagrammatic maps of the Mediterranean Sea (‘YM’ in Phoenician), as an instrument of navigation and a site of diffusion of the alphabet, cultural exchange, trade, immigration and violence. In ‘Father and Son’, the paintings are scattered across the different spaces of the exhibition and provide a thread that cuts across different works. They all have simple Phoenician titles that sound and mean the same in Arabic, often with English translations.The first is about the Mediterranean before Man. The second is about the evolution of writing from Proto Sinaic to Latin, through Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Roman. The third is about the Phoenician Alphabet spreading around the Mediterranean.Exhibition:Akram Zaatari‘Father and Son’23 April–20 July 2024Thomas Dane GalleryVia Francesco Crispi, 69Napoli#AkramZaatari@akramzaatariImages: Akram Zaatari, ‘[BL ʿT BL KTBT BL ʾDM] Before Time Before Alphabet Before Adam’, 2024; ‘[MṢʾ MʿRB] East West’, 2024; ‘[YM KTBT] Alphabet Sea’, 2024; Installation views, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples © Akram Zaatari. Photos: M3Studio.](https://sp1.pixwox.com/p/pt_6811614326582043355719_0_b7916ed30cbbd23cbe10b88d26e71259.jpg?v/t39.30808-6/449782648_18437028238036647_3390353542126483613_n.jpg?stp=c206.0.1027.1027a_dst-jpg_e15_s640x640&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=103&_nc_ohc=Tw7zwdMYw6QQ7kNvgHF2HsJ&edm=AOQ1c0wAAAAA&ccb=7-5&ig_cache_key=MzQwNDA3ODU4OTgyODA5MzUwOA%3D%3D.2.c-ccb7-5&oh=00_AYDeQLuJYQZEFkGtT5Xrtqx2RSlwuADYNIpHL1S8EF2pOA&oe=668C0B37&_nc_sid=8b3546)
