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The "Labyrinth" by Salah Sawli
is composed of a variety of transparent panels that, hanging
in different angles
from the ceiling, become carriers of separate images. These
sheets are printed with fragmented and mutually overlapping
texts, city maps, drawings, owned or collected photographs
- a material that transforms itself into an open system of
images offering continuously new visions and interpretations
to the visitors, as they enter the iconographical labyrinth
and wander on its pathways. However, the multitude of
images does have a common denominator: Beirut, the capital
of Lebanon, where Salah Sawli was born in 1962 and where he
studied at the local Academy until 1984. As a metaphorical
starting point for his installation, Sawli uses the labyrinth
structure of the old harbour city as well as its turbulent
history. Its rise to a booming culture and economic centre,
its decline following the civil war that culminated in the
division and subsequent destruction of the metropolis and
the killing and exodus of so many of its inhabitants. All this appears, almost always
without name and indication, like internal images of the memory:
a visual warehouse with a centre and peripheries that suddenly
looses its form again. Since Salah Sawli gives space and surface
to those events, which are only brought about by the movement
of the visitor, the borders between individual perception
and collective recognition, between past and present, get
into motion. -------------------------------------------------
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Nov.,
16, 1999 
