I finished school in 2001, and started studying photography at the University Saint-Esprit in Kaslik. In 2005, I helped the artist Miha Vipotnik to set up a video-graphic and photographic installation in the centre of Beirut. Although my artistic involvement and reflection started at the beginning of my studies, it was only in 2006, when I finished university, that tangible projects were realised.

In April and May 2006, I wrote, staged and performed a play called Min Wadi La Wadi. The performances took place in the Estral theatre in Hamra Street, Beirut.

War broke out in June 2006. In September and October I started the photographic project Murmures and travelled to several villages in Southern Lebanon. I spent more time in the village of Quana, where I photographed the daily life of a family of survivors, after the burial of their close relatives.

In 2007, I founded the kahraba collective with Aurélien Zouki, Eric Deniau, and Camille Brunel. In March of the same year we created a children’s play called Arabiyetna. We gave more than a hundred performances in different regions of Lebanon, in the South, the North, in villages, schools, towns etc… In October, I resumed taking photographs for the project Murmures in the South, and completed it. I exhibited the photographic project < Hala aged 24 > on the occasion of the international women’s day, in partnership with the association  Inn Concert.

In 2008 we gave Arabiyetna in Paris, and I exhibited Mumures in ‘Le Réveil’ café, boulevard Henri IV. Back in Lebanon in March I worked with the Italian NGO ‘GVC’ on photographic workshops in the Srifa region in Southern Lebanon. I worked on a new photographic project in the centre of Beirut and I showed my work Murmures in May… in Damascus, in the framework of the Photographic Days of Damascus.

Today, it seems to me that engaging in dialogue starts by the way we look at each other. Murmures aims at questioning us about that. The starting point of this work is a reflection on the choice of the perspective given or not to the audience.

Today we live in a country where cultural, religious, political and identity differences are the main cause of the war, be it internal or external. My artistic work stems from an unstable environment, where the words dialogue, sharing and tolerance become words on the lips of all politicians. And yet, the reality of Lebanon does not give the same picture.

If I try to create an artistic work it is because I am convinced that art calls for real dialogue, real listening and real sharing; that it is one of the rare places where people can meet their humane side. I am convinced that freedom starts through dialogue, where people start to listen to one another, and eventually manage to accept each other and their differences and similarities.

During the 2006 War, we were bombarded with pictures of a rare violence. These pictures deeply troubled our minds and were imposed upon us. I wondered “is a picture worth anything if the person looking at it cannot interact with what he or she sees?” Murmures is made up of 14 pictures. Each one shows a child photographed with his back to a wall. By showing the look in the eyes of the children, I make the audience more responsible in view of the way it looks at these pictures, because it sees a reflection of itself. From there on, real dialogue can be installed, and the bodies of these children, through their games, poses and attitudes, go beyond violence to bring us a breath of life and freedom.

With the karhaba collective, our actions are directed towards different regions of Lebanon, and try to carry a message through art. Which one? That of listening, tolerance and dialogue.

Another project is Hala aged 24. Witnessing artistically the reality of Hala, who survived the massacre in Qana, is a way of admitting that the Other - different from me - lives and feels, and therefore is the beginning of the path towards dialogue.

By Rima Maroun

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