portraits in partition
DATE: 2011 - Ongoing
PROJECT LOCATION: Lebanon
PROGRAM: Photo Collages and Narratives
Beirut is a post-traumatic city of war, political turmoil, and social unrest – Ideas of context and identity drive the conversation of reconstruction and healing after a fifteen year sectarian civil war. Three decades since the end of the civil war, the 140-mile long coastal region has gone through a rapid and hasty process of urbanization. The series of collages reveal the urban layers throughout the region. Oppositions – traditional vs. modernity, old centers vs. new centers, cityside vs. seaside vs. countryside – all begin to illustrate scenes across the nation. The scenes begin to question and reveal: How can architecture intervene in a context that is full of scars of war? How can it begin to erase geographical, political, religious, and social boundaries to reunite a culturally divided city? How can contemporary architecture express and build relationships within this context full of various facets of history? What does it mean to establish and re-establish roots spatially?
Some of these portraits were exhibited at the USC School of Architecture in 2019 as part of the Faculty Exhibition Series.
Portraits in Partition A series of collages, cutouts, and narratives composed from personal photographs to create a portrait of the city.