© Georges Semerdjian, 1986 / The Atlas Group, 2004, Untitled. Courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery and Sfeir Semler Galerie
Exhibitions
I Feel A Great Desire To Meet The Masses Once Again: A project by Walid Raad and The Atlas Group
Contemporary Feature and The Davies Foundation Galleries
5 February - 24 April 2005
This exhibition of works from The Atlas Group, the fictive archive of Lebanese artist Walid Raad, exposed the contingency of history in the context of the protracted civil war in Lebanon (1975-1991), and eloquently conjured the ways in which the emotional vectors of ambition and longing infuse traumatic experience. I Feel A Great Desire To Meet The Masses Once Again presented a selection of recent and new works. The Truth Will Be Known When The Last Witness Is Dead: Documents From The Fakhouri File in The Atlas Group Archive presented photographic and video documents attributed to Lebanese historian Dr Fadl Fakhouri. The second section, under the title I Was Overcome By A Momentary Panic At The Thought That They Might Be Right: Documents From The Nassar Files in The Atlas Group Archive, focused on that pernicious instrument of incidental terror: the car bomb. Used by militias across the political spectrum, the car bomb is a weapon, a technology, an event, and a form of discourse that has shaped public life in Lebanon for the past 30 years. The suggestive power of Raad's staged renditions of the traces of conflict was amplified by their uncertain status as documents.
Walid Raad lives and works in New York, where he teaches at the Cooper Union School of Fine Art. His work attracted tremendous critical acclaim following his participation in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, 2003 Venice Biennale, and Documenta 11, Kassel. An articulate analyst of the conditions of sustained, diffuse warfare, Raad is notable for his empathetic use of humour and productive elision of the permeable frontiers between fiction and historic fact.
In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition, the artist presented a compelling, 90-minute multi-media lecture/performance The Loudest Muttering Is Over: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive on Saturday 5 February at 5 pm. As a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Film Studies, Walid Raad met with students in this and other departments.
Jan Allen
This exhibition was organized and toured by the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, with the generous financial support of Salah Bachir.