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Review Th Art Guerrilla Marketing The National 08 Friday, January 2, 2009 www.thenational.ae 09 review th art Guerrilla marketing A new book chronicles the war of images waged in Lebanon’s political posters – and the way artists and designers shaped the country’s larger conflicts, writes Kaelen Wilson-Goldie Walk through the streets of virtually Pierre Gemayel, Bashir Gemayel, of Beirut’s poster wars, and the first ageing portfolios of artists, illustra- posters commemorating April 13, any neighbourhood in Beirut and Elie Hobeika, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel serious and comprehensive investi- tors and designers, whom she in- 1975, the date when Kataeb fighters you’ll find the faces of political lead- Nasser, Syria’s Hafez and Bashar As- gation of the way that fifteen years of terviewed over the course of her re- ambushed a bus full of Palestinian ers – past and present, local and for- sad and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah fighting left an indelible mark on the search as well. In April 2008, Maasri passengers in the neighbourhood eign – plastered onto construction Khomeini. city’s visual culture – one that per- presented parts of this collection in of Ain al Rummaneh, killing more walls, building façades and shut- Some of the city’s posters are tat- sists to this day. Maasri is not the first a meticulously installed exhibition than thirty and sparking the fuse of tered storefronts. Lebanon’s presi- tered and torn while others are person to single out the posters as a titled Signs of Conflict, which was civil war. dent, Michel Suleiman, has gone so freshly pasted, evidence of the ongo- uniquely Lebanese phenomenon: in produced by the arts organisation The LF poster, from 1983, glorifies far as to call for an end to the relent- ing process of marking territory as recent years a number of Lebanon’s Ashkal Alwan for the fourth edition combatants (and, by implication, less postering, but his pleas have loyal to one faction or another. Some visual artists have taken the posters of the Home Works Forum in Beirut. bloodshed) in an illustration that been largely ignored, and the city is of the names and faces on the post- as subject and inspiration. In the five years since she began her hovers above a slogan reading “April still marked by ubiquitous images, ers have changed over the years, but Jalal Toufic’s short video Saving research, Maasri has been collecting, 13, The Dawn of Freedom.” The Arab large and small, of Hassan Nasrallah, the poses, slogans, sentiments and Face (2003) offers a clever rumina- documenting and digitally archiving Liberation Front poster links the Ain Imad Mughniyeh, Nabih Berri, Musa styles are recycled again and again, tion on the thick texture created by her poster collection, and she brings al Rummaneh incident to the loss of Sadr, Michel Aoun, Rafik Hariri, Saad an apt metaphor for the politics of a the accretion of posters for various to her work a designer’s touch for Palestine in 1948, collapsing the two Hariri, Samir Kassir, Gebran Tueni, country that seems cursed to contin- candidates who are apparently vy- making the material accessible and events into a single, tragic narrative uously replay the sectarian conflicts ing for public office, even though the interactive. Anyone can visit AUB’s of devastating dispossession. The LF of its civil war. winners have been decided in ad- website and spend time with the post- poster tries to capitalise on an eight- What haunts the streets of Beirut is vance and behind closed doors. For ers online. But what sets Off the Wall year-old “victory,” probably for the not the scars of wars past – though an artist’s project that appeared in a apart is the arguments she makes purpose of recruiting future fighters they are still visible, on buildings special, Beirut-themed edition of the and the conclusions she draws. in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli pockmarked by bombshells and bul- German magazine Shift!, Ola Sinno Fawwaz Traboulsi’s foreword and invasion, the assassination of LF let holes – but the spectre of conflicts launched a hoax political campaign Maasri’s chapter on the aesthetics of leader Bashir Gemayel and the hor- future, whose scripts are foretold by by papering her neighbourhood with Lebanon’s political posters are swift rific massacre of Palestinians at the the posters jostling for prominence posters of her own face accompanied and confident. The pace of Maasri’s Sabra and Shatila camps – while its in what passes for public space (in by the slogan: “Acknowledge Me!” In introduction, however, is grinding, Arab Liberation Front counterpart the absence of grand public parks 2004, the anonymous art collective like day one in a cultural studies seeks to cast the start of the Leba- or plazas). With parliamentary elec- Heartland staged an urban interven- class. Here, Maasri takes immense nese civil war as yet another episode tions scheduled to take place in tion, titled Al Murashah (“The Can- care to delineate and define her in the epic of Palestinian resistance. Lebanon this spring, the paper arms didate”), for which the group used a terms, such as discourse, articula- Off the Wall is peppered with a race is certain to intensify further in round of municipal elections as an tion and hegemony. She gives ample number of revelations, such as the months to come. occasion to create an imaginary poli- credit to the work of Michel Foucault, Maasri’s discovery of a cache of SSNP Zeina Maasri’s new book, Off the tician, plastering his enigmatic face Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall, Ernesto posters in which partisans who had Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese across the surface of the city. Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, whose signed on for “martyrdom opera- Civil War, is the first sustained study In a handful of essays, historians, so- wide-ranging concepts she tailors to tions” took photographs of them- ciologists and urban theorists have ex- the specifics of her case study. The selves and wrote down a few final plored the impact of political posters language could have used some fi- words before blowing themselves on the residents of Beirut, suggesting nesse, but the precision with which up. The appearance of their posters that these seemingly benign pieces of Maasri treats certain theoretical con- on the streets of Beirut signified the paper guide the ways in which people structs lends tremendous credibility sordid execution of their missions. move through the city, barring them to her work. But the most significant and in- from one neighbourhood while wel- The thrust of her argument is that structive portions of the book are coming them in the next. As physical Lebanon’s political posters do not those that put forth an uncomfort- manifestations of confessional ten- constitute propaganda campaigns able but urgent argument about sions, these posters have contributed but rather mark symbolic sites of the role artists have played in shap- significantly to what Samir Khalaf, a struggle. She reads the signs, sym- ing not only the terms of Lebanon’s professor of sociology at the Ameri- bols, texts and images of the politi- political discourse but the twists can University of Beirut (AUB), has de- cal posters that were produced dur- and turns in its violent history. In scribed as the geography of fear and ing the civil war as evidence of how the early days of the civil war, many the retribalization of space in Leba- different communities and factions leading artists contributed to the non’s post-civil war era. fought to define, assert and articu- political poster campaigns of vari- Maasri, a graphic designer and late themselves on Lebanon’s social, ous parties. Omran Kaysi, from Iraq, professor, has collected some 700 cultural and political landscape. created posters expressing solidar- political posters, culled from the The sheer number of groups whose ity with South Lebanon and promot- archives at the American University posters Maasri considers speaks vol- ing resistance to Israeli incursions. of Beirut, the media offices of vari- umes about the factional chaos of the The Lebanese artist Rafic Charaf ous political parties, the personal civil war: the book features examples adapted his painterly style to posters affects of former partisans and the from Amal, Hizbollah, the Syrian So- for Amal. The Lebanese artist Paul cial Nationalist Party (SSNP), an as- Guiragossian, whose paintings are sortment of independent Nasserite now a benchmark of modern and movements, the Lebanese outpost contemporary Arab art auctions in of the Baath Party, the Communist London and Dubai, contributed art- Party, a conglomeration of other left- works for posters that were circulat- ist groups, the Palestinian Liberation ed by the Communist Party. Organization in Lebanon, the Pro- Youssef Abdelkeh, a former Syrian gressive Socialist Party, the Kataeb dissident who is currently represent- “We will resist”: Political posters, like this one designed by the Lebanese artist Nazem Irani for the Lebanese National Resistance Front in 1984, are a mainstay of Beirut’s Party and the Lebanese Forces. Maas- ed by the Ayyam Gallery in Damascus streetscape. Reproduced here is a sampling of images from Zeina Maasri’s new book Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War.All images courtesy of the author ri groups them into themes – such as and Dubai, also created posters for leadership, commemoration, mar- the Communist Party. Jamil Molaeb, offer commentary during moments art. At a panel during last year’s Art increasingly sought to express sub- tyrdom and belonging – and explores the darling of Galerie Janine Rubeiz of popular uprising or political cam- Dubai fair, a terrific spat broke out jective and political truths through the visual iconographies and textual in Beirut, made posters for the PSP.
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