„Drawing From Life“ by Maria Kassab- 31 Jan__2 Apr, 2023
Maris Kassab
Ausstellung vom 31.01.2023 bis 22.03.2023
Über die Ausstellung
The following series, “drawings from life,” is an ongoing project depicting extracts from the artist’s daily testimonies, translating memories and incidents from family, social, political, and cultural impressions inspired by two cities, her hometown Beirut and Berlin, where she resides now.
While in Beirut, Kassab started painting during the pandemic before moving to Berlin. The lockdown triggered the urge to paint again in order to seek safety in fictitious spaces and bright colors. And this stayed the case upon her arrival in Berlin. It is said that loneliness is our companion to all, and it can be the harshest expression of our humanity. This isolation oscillates between her paintings and feeds on bright colors and sometimes dark strokes. It helps her deal with the memories of the war, and displacement, the repeated strokes are what inhabit the body and the mind. A traumatic trajectory while feeling like a fugitive and a hostage in your own home. It lies in the eyes of her subject, in their isolation, sometimes adding another character to her painting, emphasizing the theme of duality, exploring complex relationships, and conveying a message that addresses issues of identity and a subtle dialogue on past and present issues.
Maria says: “I pleaded for bright colors to cure the loneliness that we lived in collectively, for so many
months.”
Über den Künstler
Maria Kassab is a Lebanese Interdisciplinary artist and creative director, she studied Communication Arts and Fine Arts at the Lebanese American University, Beirut.
She is based in Berlin and completed her Masters of Art in Photography at the BTK Arts & Design University Berlin, in 2022.
Her work has been exhibited internationally most notably in Beirut, Paris, Washington DC, Copenhagen, Brussels, Palermo, and Berlin. Her artworks are published in international and local art magazines. She is currently in the process of researching different visual languages while exploring new cultural and social territories.
While a photographer would view the photographic print as an endpoint, Maria Kassab sees it as a starting place. Images and photographs are blank canvases in need of materiality.
Her work focuses on trauma, memory, and displacement, conveying her irreconcilable relationship with home (Lebanon). Her deconstructive identity involves the decontextualization of subjects and objects from their natural habitat. She states that her work is a resistance to the Lebanese political and cultural dilemma, narrating the physical and mental transformations within fictitious spaces.
Her constructive and deconstructive images navigate between absence and presence while recollecting a timeline of violent events from her hometown Beirut.