Galerie Tanit escapes its ruins towards a less wild kingdom.

One might ask, why now and why a bestiary, in a time where Beirut and its people are still picking pieces of themselves dispersed after the horrible explosion of August 4, 2020.

Since no living soul can continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality, this exhibition comes as a thought-out choice, a means to distance what is left of us from the oppressive and suffocating reality in which we are living in Lebanon today.

We chose to dive in the world of animals, a persistent subject of the arts, if not one of its first subjects, which continued to be depicted heavily in modernity.

You will discover tales and legends of fantastical fauna in a selection of dioramas by Randa Mirza representing pre-Islamic myths, terracotta and bronze fables of Fadi Yazigi, abreast with Michel Zoghzoghi’s photographs of wild animals in their natural habitat. You will question how you interact with the subjects of Franck Christen’s photographs and reflect on Simone Fattal’s terracotta mirroring antiquity.

The behavior of the wildest of animals cannot be compared to the cruelty and egoism of human beings.

A Bestiary is an online exhibition starting on November 30, 2020 and continuing until 2021 on www.galerietanit.com with an in-situ exhibition at ABC Verdun, Beirut, with dates to be announced soon.

A Bestiary with Simone Fattal, Ghassan Zard, Randa Mirza, Fadi Yazigi, David Kramer, Youssef Abdelke, Franck Christen, Michel Zoghzoghi, Serwan Baran, Oussama Baalbaki, Nadim Karam, and Maïa Tabet.

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