Rayyane Tabet
Fossils
2006
| Installation: 8 cement suitcases
Rayyane Tabet's Fossils is inspired from his childhood
in Beirut, a city tormented by war, fear and death. In this
mixed-media installation, petrified suitcases literally represent
the permanent state of constant mobility that the Lebanese
at present find themselves in. Tabet's solidified luggage
seems to suggest that the unpredictable nature of life in
Lebanon during the civil war, with the enduring possibility
of having to evacuate your home at any given moment and the
compulsive outlook of having your bags packed just in case,
became normalized in the way the Lebanese organize their lives
and their habitats today; this normalization manifests itself
in a perpetually overwhelming, unconscious urge, perhaps even
readiness, to escape. In Tabet's work, the suitcases, which
are encased in concrete and which have been transformed from
mobile containers into architectural buildings, stand as substitutes
for the home. Fossils is a memorial, then, to the dwelling
no more.
Born in Lebanon in 1983, Rayyane Tabet is an artist and architect
who lives and works in New York. In his installations, Tabet
utilizes everyday objects such as mattresses, soap bars and
suitcases in surreal ways, investing them with symbolic meanings.
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