Galerie Claude Lemand

HANIBAL SROUJI (Lebanon, born in 1957)
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Interview - CULTURAL AGENDA - Hanibal SROUJI, Let us Dream.
Hanibal Srouji and dream therapy.

Although it bears the scars of war, the work of Hanibal Srouji is ther­a­peutic. It repairs the Lebanese, softens the trauma rooted in them and illus­trates a part of the dream that everyone car­ries within them­selves. Hanibal’s art has a psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ical dimen­sion.

 Why did you abandon the path taken by most Lebanese artists, that of archiving the Lebanese civil war and its mem­o­ries?
My first exhi­bi­tion in Lebanon, Particules, at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, in 1997, was one of the first exhi­bi­tions in a gallery that dared to pub­licly reveal the memory of the Lebanese civil war. My work was and remains pic­to­rial. The can­vases were burnt and per­fo­rated by fire, which for me evokes con­stel­la­tions of par­ti­cles in motion. These paint­ings shocked the public at the time, because they evoked per­sonal and col­lec­tive mem­o­ries. A con­fer­ence on the theme of "Memory" 5 was sched­uled to coin­cide with the exhi­bi­tion, at which I was able to explain the need to address the traumas we had suf­fered during the war years. This con­fer­ence was fol­lowed by a debate in the gallery’s exhi­bi­tion room. Today, I haven’t given up on this debate. The war is never over. It’s still with us, it has changed its face over time, and I wanted my sub­se­quent exhi­bi­tions to be spaces for reflec­tion, as it were, on these changes.

On the other hand, if I resorted to the inten­sive use of fire in my can­vases, it was out of neces­sity. It was an evo­lu­tion, par­tic­u­larly exper­i­mental and tech­nical: from the use of rust, which is an oxi­da­tion, a slow burn, on the raw canvas, which then accel­er­ated, using fire, sharp and direct. Moreover, my use of fire remains sym­bolic: I belong to a gen­er­a­tion that was lit­er­ally uprooted and burned by the war. For me, fire is part of the "Sacred" regime, both puri­fying and cre­ative. I’m in no way fas­ci­nated by its destruc­tive powers. This fire has never gone out. Most of my works bear the stigma of being marked by fire, like a reminder, before trans­forming and col­oring into a pos­i­tive, med­i­ta­tive space.

 In the exhi­bi­tion ’Let us Dream’, you devote an essen­tial part to dreams. How do you manage to show this aes­thet­i­cally?
This exhi­bi­tion is an invi­ta­tion to dream, despite the chaos that sur­rounds us. If I dis­tanced myself early on from the direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion of war, it’s because I real­ized that this ’rep­re­sen­ta­tion’, which we pro­duce of our­selves, has become a media ref­er­ence that sticks to us, as much because of the media as because of Western intel­lec­tuals and cura­tors, as if we had nothing left to pre­sent, as cit­i­zens of the Middle East. Nothing to offer but visions of sav­agery, des­o­la­tion, what is deformed, death and noth­ing­ness.

Somewhere along the line, I wanted to pay tribute to all those who braved the bombs during the war to attend artistic and cul­tural events, to all those who were always thirsty and who believed in and sup­ported cul­ture and art in Lebanon. The men and women who have made this con­ti­nuity pos­sible right up to the pre­sent day. This exhi­bi­tion is a pro­posal, an invi­ta­tion, to dream, because we are still for­bidden to med­i­tate, to guess, to rein­vent a future of peace and porosity; as if we were con­demned in advance in this region, where the white of snow, the amber of honey and the laughter of birds flowed. Has the dream, the Orient, bitten the dust forever?

 Hanibal Srouji, your work is known for its ther­a­peutic qual­i­ties. Tell us about it.
In 1999, the Healing Bands exhi­bi­tion was a pro­posal to try, or rather, to force the pas­sage to healing. It’s a reflec­tion, a pro­posal to think about ban­daging and healing our wounds. Perhaps it was too soon for some the "Bands", which have a dis­tant echo of Ethiopian magic scrolls, I wanted them to inspire a pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion, spir­i­tual and phys­ical, for us and for post-war gen­er­a­tions. After the assig­na­tion of mem­o­ries and the tur­moil of trauma, I hoped for an acknowl­edge­ment of the wounds. In a way, I was hoping for an accel­er­a­tion of the stages of mourning, but the 2000s were not an easy time, with the series of assas­si­na­tions that shook the nation, and when, above all, the intel­lec­tual became the target, it was out­lawed even for us to think freely, it was for­bidden to exist. We still had to shout, always; and create work to pro­pose other alter­na­tives, other spaces.

 What form does nos­talgia gen­er­ally take in your work?
I’m not a nos­talgic painter, since I’m cut­ting to the quick in matter. Painting is an ardent act in the real, since the artist con­structs it. Only the shadow of the van­ished image arouses nos­talgia for what is forever lost. This exhi­bi­tion invites us to dream, to look to the future in full 6 aware­ness and knowl­edge of what has hap­pened, with a sound and solid foun­da­tion of our his­tory. There are images from my child­hood that nourish me, that are mixed up with other very vio­lent ones, and it’s these that I’m working to sub­li­mate by proposing a space, a clearing, to dream.

 What are your next pro­jects?
Enlarge the space of the pos­sible...
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Nayla Tamraz:
A chro­ma­tism as much as a song, mixing the visual and musical dimen­sions, in a synes­thetic sen­sory approach. One is of course tempted to see in this incan­ta­tion yet another way of uniting with the uni­verse - one thinks of the nov­elist Jean Giono’s Song of the World which recounts, in a lyrical mode, an ideal of fusion between man and nature, a sort of eulogy to cre­ation, while con­veying the idea of a new fight where the broth­er­hood of men pre­vails over vio­lence.

From 2010, in a series of ver­tical paint­ings titled Land and Sea, which fea­ture lay­ered paint washes, Hanibal Srouji would revisit his impres­sions of land, sea and end­less sky, as he would later oppor­tu­nity to develop the strictly musical dimen­sion of his painting. He will affirm that, for him, painting is visual music and that, when he hears music, he sees colors. (Excerpts. Nayla Tamraz, Le Chant élémentaire de Hanibal Srouji, Ici Beyrouth, 2023)
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Zena Zalzal:
Despite his white locks, there’s some­thing incred­ibly youthful about this artist in his six­ties. Something clear, gentle and playful in his dark eyes. A gaze that tire­lessly scans the horizon of his can­vases and care­fully fol­lows the tra­jec­tory of the fire he lights to recom­pose, with the ashes and mixed pig­ments, the vari­a­tions of sky, earth and sea that have haunted his art for 42 years.

For four decades now, Hanibal Srouji has been pic­to­ri­ally unfolding those moments when, in 1976, aboard a ship fleeing shell­fire, he watched the Lebanese coast drift away. This native land that the teenager des­per­ately tried to retain, and failing that, to record in his memory, by staring at it through the port­hole... And which grad­u­ally faded, reducing itself to a dis­tant dot the size of a pebble, to give way to the sheer immen­sity of the open sea. This painter’s entire artistic approach draws on the tire­less resur­gence of this vision. In the rem­i­nis­cence of this emo­tion of depar­ture, made up of con­tra­dic­tory feel­ings of anguish and hope, of uprooting and desire for else­where... All his painting comes from there. From those founding moments that would irre­vo­cably make the 19-year-old Lebanese, bound for Canada, an exile in his own mind. An artist con­stantly seeking to recon­struct on canvas his pre-depar­ture mem­o­ries, but also his return pro­jec­tions... In what could have been today’s Lebanon, had the war not scarred and dis­fig­ured it.

The eternal child­hood of art. Hanibal Srouji’s dream is a chimerical return to the serenity of the Lebanon of his child­hood. Before the onslaught of vio­lence. In the days when, as a young boy, he watched from the roof of his family’s house in Saïda, "the shapes and defor­ma­tions of the sun and clouds as they approached the horizon". "Fascinated, I would try to draw my impres­sions of the set­ting sun, on the spot, in oil pas­tels", he recalls. The box of "Caran d’Ache" oil pas­tels he received as a "mar­vel­lous" pre­sent from his uncle, the painter Halim Jurdak, for his 13th birthday - was to be the cat­a­lyst for his talent. And his draw­ings of the time were to form 4 the preamble to his per­sonal pic­to­rial vocab­u­lary, with their "embrase­ments" - which he would later achieve by fire-marking - and impres­sion­istic touches of color subtly scat­tered over the large, lon­gi­tu­dinal for­mats he favors. (Zena Zalzal, Hanibal Srouji, du feu et des rêves, OLJ 2018)
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Solo Exhibitions with Galerie Claude Lemand :
 2023. Hanibal Srouji. The Song of the World. Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.
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Group Exhibitions with Galerie Claude Lemand :
2021. Lights from Lebanon. Institut du monde arabe, Paris. Donation Claude & France Lemand.