An article by DM (833 Words, 4 Min. Read)
To steps into stéphanie saadé’s exhibition at the Sursock Museum is to Walk, Quite Litelly, Over Memory. The Floors of the Galleries, ONCE A Family Home, No. Carry The RecONSTRUCTED SURFACES of Another: The Artist’s Childhood Apartment in Lebanon. “TraveséE des éTats“(Terrazzo Tiles) Spreads Out Beneth Your Fet, Not As a Set Piece, But as Lived Ground. Ceramic, Terrazzo, and Carpeet Convert in Silent Dissonance, forming a home that no longer sexs, Rebuilt not in nostalgia, but in fragms Grammar.
There are no walls. Only the marks when they used to be.
This is a show that lives in agershocks, not only of arishitecture, but of Trauma, Exile, and Return.
A House after The Blast
On August 4, 2020, The Port of Beirut Exploded. The City Shook, and with It, The Fabric of Countles Lives Unraveled. For Saadé, who had long been navigating the Drift Between Beirut and Eurobe, this Catastrophe Crystallized Something Long Accumulating: Displacement as a permenent Condition. In The Months and Years after, she began working from what was available: Residues, Remans, Substations. In Exile, she was used what she could Hold in here hands. Back Home, She Turned Her Parents’ House INTO A Studio, a Memory Bank, a Source of Material.
This Exh force is Not to Explain or Redeem the RuPture, but to Inhabit it.
Dust as memory, not decay
The Exhibition’s Title, The Encounter of the First and Last Particles of DustTakes on a mythic weight. Dust is not putted as the end of the decay, but as a beginning, a portal. In One of the Most Haunting Works, Curtains Salvged from Her Family Home Are Embroidered with the 37 Routes Saadé Took as a Teenager, Between 1995 and 2001. These Paths, once Routine –visits, Errands, School, Escapes –now Shimmer on the Fabric Like Veins. The Curtains Do Not Fit the Museum Windows; They are passive Like Displaced Time.
Dust gathers here not as residue, but as will.
Where time Spirals, Not Flows
Saadé’s RelacesHip with time is never Linear. In It is…A Massive Circular Calligram Inscripd by Hand, The Seconds of Hour Spiral Outward in Quiet Revolt Against Standardized Time. The Lines Wobble, The Ink Trembles. Writing becomes Not A Record But An EFFORT; Each Second Scatched INTO Cardboard, One by One, For Months. What emairs is not a look, but a wound Made Visible. A Refusal to Let Time Pass Unnotied. A Fatigue that Special of Waiting, Of Longing, of Enduance.
As Curator Anne Davidian Writes, “Each Work Sets Its Own Conditions of Unfolding.“ Here, Time Does Not Tick. IT Presses.
Fragments that refuse to Disappear
What makes saadé’s work so Deeply Affecting is not Just its personal nature, but the way it elevates the minor, the overlooked. In Petits PapiersScrips of Her Daily Life -Tickets, Drawings, TAPE, Stickeers –Ar Arrangeed Like A Private Archive of Epherera. Stickers Repurposes ADHESIVE ResISIDUS Left Behind by Her Daughter. These are not Just Sentimental Traceses. They are Affairs of Life Continuing, Persisting, in Spite of.
In the terrazzo panes (Travesée Des éTats), Shaards of Fairuz albums are embededed like fossils, albums that once played Through lebanon’s Golden Eras and Throw Its Darkest Hours. Vinyl becomes Stone, Sound BECELES PATTERN. It is an act of transmission when memory becomes Mineral.
No Narrative, JUST PREST
This is not a. It does not off There is no Resolution, only Resonance. Saadé’s Practice Leans Closer to Notation Than Narration. HER GESTURES Are Small But Loaded. A metal bar cut and Welded back toGether (Scarred Object). A photograph Covered in Gold Leaf, Obsuring the Child IT DEPICTS (Golden Memories). A poem meaaseed in centerimers, Stripped of Meang (Word Count).
These works do not SPEAK. They Hold. They Remind. They Touch.
A Home Rebuilt from Absence
Ultimately, The Sursock Exh force is not About Returning Home. It is about what has had what home is no longer what it was, where the physical space relimines, but everything with it has changed. By Reproduction It is a Radical Kind of Intime, Letting Visits Move Freely Through Her RemembERED Space.
But this is not a replica. It is a hanting. A placeholder. A Way to Inhabit Memory with Being Trayed in It.
The Personal is Cultural, Symbolic, and Mateial
This Exh force With account to her studio, with the familiar structures of make, saadé conned to find she had: dust, scraps, Time, Distance, AHE. She tok the things that could not be said and Built with them.
Because when Catastrophe Sees to Erase, What person makesters.
