Art in General

Art in General is pleased to present its first International New Commission, a new installation by Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh.

Mounira Al Solh was born in Beirut in 1978. She studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut (LB), and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). Between 2006 and 2008, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. 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 parallells between socio-political issues and aesthetics. She frequently appropriates other artworks, and often metamorphoses into other characters and mainly fictional artists.

“Al Solh’s work is characterized by a style that combines introspection, narrative and a constant play between reality and fiction, all of which is treated in a playful and seemingly candid way.”* Catherine Somzé, on “The Sea Is A Stereo” Motive Gallery, 2007

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 Pavillion 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.