Good Morning Beirut
2006 | Installation; ink, paper, wall; dimensions variable
Previous
showings
OMI New York, 2006
At
the onset of the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006, "Good
Morning Beirut," a famous caricature by Naji al Ali,
first printed in Al Safeer newspaper in the midst of the civil
war in 1982, was intactly redistributed via email. Overwhelmed
by the repetitiveness of Middle Eastern history and particularly
beset by the caricature’s fatal relevance twenty four years
later, Oraib Toukan created her own Good Morning Beirut.
Toukan’s Good Morning Beirut was a site-specific
installation of a roll of paper on which were consecutively
laid out all the emails, in intimate detail, that the artist
received during the first few weeks of the war. All of the
emails were printed once onto the paper roll using the process
of ink transfer. Viewers are encouraged to carefully read
these personal exchanges. First installed at ART OMI in New
York, the piece was interactive such that the audience could
roll out more paper to read additional correspondences. In
reinstalling the piece nine months later, the artist has grossly
exaggerated the size of the paper roll. By doing so, Toukan
has made it almost impossible to retrieve more information,
turning the once interactive installation into a static and
‘classically monumental’ sculpture.
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