Encounters—Ongoing

Abstract

Abstract The series of drawings, Encounters – ongoing stems from chance meetings on leisurely road trips around the mountains of Lebanon. The drawings act as markers of my conversations with landowners, farmers, and people directly working in the fields. The formal particularities of drawing, and specifically the use of ink washes, allows for an approach that is both intuitive and intentional. This approach reproduces the spontaneity of these accidental or brief exchanges with people who have a vested interest in Lebanese land. Each conversation is represented by a simple tree branch, or a fragment of a (flowering) plant, belonging to the site and moment the encounter took place. This fragment indexes an encounter in which the farmer's story, experience, or relationship to the land and its borders was shared. Excerpts from our exchanges are also hand-written in Arabic on the picture plane. In the directness of the creative process, and the abstraction of the conversations, this project alludes to, and yet blurs, the sectarian divisions upon which the ownership of land is based, as well as a present geopolitical context. What I share is the marking of unplanned encounters through the representations of fragmented personal accounts along specific terrains and borders.