Curating Beirut: A Conversation on the Politics of Representation

The following roundtable conversation, conducted via e-mail during November 2006, assembles a group of curators to consider the stakes and conditions of the national and international exhibition of Beirut-based practices. The participants all bear hands-on experience working in Lebanon and enter into dialogue from unique perspectives: Sandra Dagher, who directed the gallery Espace SD for seven years, is developing a new nonprofit contemporary art space in Beirut and, with Saleh Barakat, is organizing the first Lebanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2007); Catherine David, artistic director of Documenta X, is the organizer of the long-term project Contemporary Arab Representations. Rasha Salti, an independent curator and freelance writer based in Beirut and NewYork, oversees New York's CinemaEast Film Festival; and Christine Tohme directs the Beirut-based Ashkal Alwan (Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts), which, among its many activities, organizes Home Works, a semiannual series of symposia and exhibitions inaugurated in 2002 and dedicated to Middle Eastern cultural practices.