Echoes from Lebanon will soon launch a new room where young artists between the ages of 15-35 will have a chance to showcase artwork that reimagines an ideal Lebanon. Apply now here.
Echoes from Lebanon is a virtual exhibit that launched in March 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people in Lebanon were unable to visit art exhibitions due to restrictions and lockdowns in place.
Before the pandemic hit, Randa Farah, co-founder of Lebtivity, a social calendar for events in Lebanon, was often invited to art exhibitions in Lebanon, but witnessing the lack of such events during the pandemic and the pain and the suffering that the artists were expressing at the time, she decided to create a virtual exhibit that reaches people around the world, “Echoes from Lebanon.”
“I wanted the world to hear the scream coming from the artists to the world, so when you scream, there is an echo and if you see the visual [referring to the logo], there’s a map with an echo echo echo, so it’s actually echoes from Lebanon, and it’s the voice of the artists screaming and having the echoes going all over the world,” said Farah.
Room 1: Lebanon’s struggles
Room 2: The October 2019 revolution; Room 3: The 2020 Port of Beirut explosion
Room 4: The 2020 Beirut explosion aftermath
The exhibit features the work of around 100 artists on the themes of arts and politics and is divided into five separate rooms, including a memorial wall. The first one showcases the different problems in Lebanon. The second one is about the 2019 revolution. The third one represents the Aug. 4, 2020 Port of Beirut explosion, and the fourth one is about the aftermath of the explosion.
The memorial wall, #TheyMatter, was a 300-meter-long art installation of portraits of over 200 victims of the Beirut blast explosion installed on May 4, 2021, a few meters away from the blast area.
The Memorial Wall, #TheyMatter, by artist Brady Black and The Art of Change
“We created a memorial of this wall in 360 so this is the only thing that was filmed actually in reality … and now they removed those paintings so this wall was eternalized on our website,” said Farah.
The project is a collaborative effort between Farah’s educational platform, I Have Learned Academy, and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation that promotes peace, freedom, and justice via civic education programs.
Through this exhibit, Farah wants people to see what Lebanon was expressing through the artists and hopes to show the artistic and creative talents in the country.
“And even if they tried to shut us up or to stop the revolution, through arts you can express a lot so it’s a peaceful way of doing our demonstration, manifestation, revolution. So it’s a ‘cultural revolution.’”
In the last two years, the exhibit has led several international events, held panel discussions with participating artists, and expanded to four other countries: Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, and Jordan.
Over the next few weeks, we’d showcase some of the featured artists in the exhibit.