Mounira Al Solh is a flâneur by conviction and nature. Since the times when she used to walk around her native Beirut hand in hand with her parents and even nowadays, the artist likes to wander, discover existences, and allow herself to be absorbed by them, and then she sets out again to unexpected, unforeseen, randomly chosen places.

Not by chance, Al Solh’s work is permeated with reflections on transitoriness and on how it has become a way of life. The history of art, its setbacks, its relation with daily life, and the political reality in Lebanon also provide material to the artist, who uses fiction to dye in different colors elements of her fellow countrymen’s collective unconscious: war, the fierce power struggles between different groups, the impact of years of conflict on the way the Lebanese think and live, and on the way in which they are viewed and portrayed.

Al Solh’s video work stands out because it is at once intelligent and engaging, wrote the Canadian journalist Jim Quilty, who lives and works in Lebanon, in the Essay for this Dossier. “Unhinging the documentary premises commonly ascribed to the medium, Solh’s work restages discussions of belonging, representation, and the like—oft-rehearsed in these identity-conscious times.”

Accepted into the Dutch Rijksakademie for a two-year artistic residency, Al Solh lives between Amsterdam and Beirut. Not belonging to either of them, she ensures the validity of the passport that enables her to be here and there, inhabiting the intimate territory that obeys only the commands and handwriting of her flâneur soul.

Further info on this artist available at the collection