Galerie Claude Lemand

YAZAN HALWANI, THE MEMORY TREE. - LEBANON, THE GREAT FAMINE, 1915-1918.

www.yazan­hal­wani.com

From 1915 to 1918, cur­rent day Lebanon wit­nessed one of its most tragic events: The Great Famine. More than half of the pop­u­la­tion died or immi­grated to flee from hard­ship, yet the Great Famine has not had any memo­rials… It is said that the Lebanese suffer from col­lec­tive amnesia, and that Beirut finds it dif­fi­cult to recall its brutal past. It is also said those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

The art­work is the memo­rial of the vic­tims of the ‘Great Famine’ of Lebanon (1915-1918) that resulted in the migra­tion and death of more than half of Mount Lebanon and Beirut’s pop­u­la­tion. This event and many others, have not had a memo­rial erected for them in the past cen­tury.
A hun­dred years later, only the trees can bear wit­ness to the events that occurred.

The Memory Tree car­ries within it the memory of the people. Its ‘leaves’ are com­posed of writ­ings of many con­tem­po­raries to the famine such Gibran Khalil Gibran, Tawfik Yousef Awwad, Anbara Salam Al-Khalidi and many others.