Exhibition Research Lab (LJMU)
Free
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Join Heba Hage-Felder, Director of the Arab Image Foundation and Tarek Mourad, Artist and Director of Beirut Printmaking Studio for a discussion on the process behind the exhibition, their collaboration and the relationship between archives, photography and printmaking.
This talk will be facilitated by Mariam Attah, Curator, Open Eye Gallery.
Part of a day of associated activity related to the exhibitions for Liverpool Arab Arts Festival 2022, hosted by the Exhibition Research Lab.
About the exhibition
Impressions of an Archive is a collaborative exhibition by the Arab Image Foundation (AIF) and the Beirut Printmaking Studio.
Impressions from an Archive brings printmakers from the recently created analogue printmaking studio into dialogue with the photographic collection of the 25-year-old Arab Image Foundation. How might each printmaker “translate” their chosen photograph through their individual printmaking practice?
The Arab Image Foundation’s work is an ever-evolving research process into ways of looking at, interpreting, and interacting with the photographic objects in its custody. A photographic negative or print, once created, remains in constant physical mutation. Likewise, its historical, cultural, and affective lives will depend on the viewer and will continue to shift. Through its work, the AIF studies the material and immaterial layers of photographs and seeks to further enrich this layering.
For this exhibition, printmakers from the Beirut Printmaking Studio chose images from diverse AIF collections, spanning from the 1870s to the 1970s, and from different parts of the Arab region and its diaspora, from which to produce their own intaglio prints. Positive prints of the original photographic negatives have been produced, each of which is displayed alongside the corresponding intaglio print as a diptych.
This exhibition reminds us how archives can support the objects they contain in their continuous evolutions, across social, artistic, cultural, and geopolitical currents. In this way, archiving becomes an act of collective and plural translation, in which different realities and perspectives can co-exist, breathing new life into photographic objects.
The Arab Image Foundation is an independent association forging new pathways for photography and image practices. Its collection of over 500,000 photographic objects and documents from and related to the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora has been gradually assembled over the last 25 years by artists and researchers and through donations. With a critical and innovative approach, it collects, rethinks, preserves, activates and understands these photographs through their multiple strata, and enriches the collection in the process.
Beirut Printmaking Studio is an inclusive and open space for people from all walks of life interested in discovering, learning and practicing art. It is the only open printmaking studio in Lebanon that covers all forms of analogue printmaking, including intaglio, lithography, relief, alternative processes and darkroom photography. The studio aims at promoting and establishing analogue techniques in Lebanon, especially printmaking techniques.
www.beirutprintmakingstudio.com
The Exhibition Research Lab (ERL) is an academic centre and public venue dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of exhibitions and curatorial knowledge. Founded in 2012 as part of Liverpool John Moores University’s Liverpool School of Art and Design, the ERL is uniquely positioned across academic research and the cultural ecology of Liverpool, underpinned by partnerships with cultural institutions in the city including Tate Liverpool, John Moores Painting Prize, and Liverpool Biennial.
www.exhibition-research-lab.co.uk
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Location:
Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool John Moores University, The John Lennon Art and Design Building, 2 Duckinfield St, Liverpool L3 5RD
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