Nahawand. Beirut, Lebanon, 2014, archival pigment print. Courtesy the artist.
(L-R) Big Ben. Dbayeh Suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, 2014, and Kate Winslet. Beirut, Lebanon, 2016, archival pigment prints. Courtesy the artist.
(L-R) Vivid. Beirut, Lebanon, 2014, Hotel Window. Beirut, Lebanon, 2016, and Nahawand. Beirut, Lebanon, 2014, archival pigment prints. Courtesy the artist.
Motivated by the changing urban landscape in Lebanon, Beirut is a series of photographs that explores what the capital looks like today: a city overwhelmed by the congestion of billboards. In one sense the advertisements are a visual indicator for capitalist growth, and in another they purport a mythologized western luxury that is incongruous against the backdrop of a rough-edged post-conflict cityscape. Hovering monumentally above the developing landscape, depictions of western men and women offer luxury products that have become locally available in recent years. Advertising functions best when it couples the attainable with the unattainable—the unattainable in this case, is the idealized culture of another civilization. Rendered in sobering gray-scale, in her work for Queens International 2016, Abu-Shaheen addresses the consequences of globalized communication and commerce in the stark disparity of an imported aesthetic with locally lived experience.
Manal Abu-Shaheen received an MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art (2011); a BA from Sarah Lawrence College (2003); and attended Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon (1999). Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (2014), The Print Shop at MoMA/PS1, Long Island City, NY (2014), Camera Club of New York, New York, NY (2013) and Welch School of Art and Design Galleries, Atlanta, GA (2012). She currently teaches at the City College of New York. She is the recipient of the 2016 A.I.R Gallery Fellowship and the 2015 Artist in the Marketplace Residency program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.