Mounira al Solh
Mounira Al Solh (Beirut, 1978) studied at the Lebanese University in Beirut (1997-2001 ) and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2003-2006), and was resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (2007-2008).
Her work has been represented in the Lebanese pavilion at the Venice Biënnale (2007), in Manifesta 8 in Murcia (2010), at the presentation of the Volkskrant Visual Art Prize in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2010), and in the extensive survey ‘The Future of Tradition – The Tradition of Future’ in Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2010).
Her work is multidisciplinary, osciliating between video, installation, writing, photography and painting. Al Solh has been working on issues related to Lebanese immigrants, with both physical and mind-set manifestations, as well as Lebanese socio-political and religious conflicts. Her approach is not documentary but fictional, even fantastic. While transforming dramatic situations into ironical ones, she seems to be making conscious periodic parallels between socio-political issues and aesthetics. She frequently appropriates other artworks, and often metamorphoses into other characters and mainly fictional artists.
Her video Rawane’s Song was screened in several film festivals, amongst them VideoBrasil that gave it the jury’s prize for 2007. Her video installation As If I Don’t Fit There was part of the exhibition titled Forward at the first Lebanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and at the exhibition ‘Be(com)ing Dutch’ at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. Most recently, she received the Uriòt Prize from the Rijksakademie.
Source: https://dutchartinstitute.eu
