There are a total of 81 photos hung in neat rows of nine. The artist had a problem developing the film, which has left streaks over each image that look like neon lights.
The effect is like a broken TV monitor that constantly flickers between channels. In one photo, a man wears a shrunken Mickey Mouse costume whose oversized head rests deflated on one shoulder. A boy holding a tray of eggs tugs, pleading, at his elbow.
Another photo shows a woman dressed in a niqab standing beside a bouncy castle complex where mountains loom on the horizon.
A close-up shows a small silver tank rolling over the outstretched palm of a child.
Self-taught photographer and videographer Arif Al Nomay took these photos at the 2014 edition of Sanaa Summer Festival. Nomay’s series “Corrupted Files,” is part of a touring exhibition that aims to shatter the narrative tropes in which the media has sealed Yemen.
Comprised of work by six Yemeni artists, the exhibition “On Echoes of Invisible Hearts” developed from an initiative by Sanaa-based Diwan al-Fan and debuted last fall at Berlin’s The Markaz art center. The Station Beirut iteration is the first reprise of the show.
The artists have tasked themselves to recreate an alternative narrative of Yemen, one that acknowledges the tragedies the country has faced and how the world has responded, but also looks beyond the conflict.
“It’s very interesting to bring a different part of the region here,” Station co-founder and director Nabil Canaan told The Daily Star, “to break the Lebanese exclusivity of ‘We own war.’”
Canaan says there’s been a generation of globally recognized Lebanese artists whose works have dealt exclusively with violence, sectarianism, memory and exile. The work of Lebanese-born artists reflects a wide array of formal and thematic concerns, of course, but the exhibition serves to remind Lebanese audiences that other countries are in a different stage of processing their own wars.
“All the issues that existed in [Yemen’s] first civil war are coming back to the surface now,” exhibition curator Lila Nazemian said. “That’s where the parallel lies with Lebanon. Lebanon has also had a very painful, brutal civil war. None of those issues that they went to war for have been dealt with.”
Nazemian said “Echoes” encourages Lebanese viewers to ask themselves whether they can see connections between Yemen’s present and Lebanon’s past.
In her installation piece Jenaza, Yemeni-Bosnian multimedia artist Alia Ali screens the twitter feed of Hussain Albukhaiti, a Sanaa-based Yemeni journalist.
Albukhaiti shared countless photos of bodies lying in the streets following an Aug. 9, 2018 airstrike by the Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition that hit a school bus and killed 42 children. The video slowly moves over each mangled corpse, studying each one. Simultaneously two neighboring screens run other footage. One shows members of the U.S Congress chatting idly, and another shows what looks like a promotional video for Boeing rockets and missiles.
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In front of the screens lie 42 pieces of white cloth - evocative of the death shroud - each one folded five times. The cloth represents the children killed in the school bus attack.
On another wall are three canvases by Chicago-based Yemeni artist Yasmine Diaz. One piece, “Averting is Easy,” is plastered in images of exploding bombs and U.S tabloid headlines that were written around the time of the Aug. 9 airstrike.
Headlines are taken from publications like “The New York Times” and “USA Today” and range from “Yemen’s War is a Tragedy, is it also a crime?” to “Beyonce Shares adorable rare photos of twins Rumi and Sir.”
“Mr. Ali” a work by Sanaa-based multimedia artist Rahman Taha includes two video pieces. In an ethnographic fashion, Taha’s work follows the life of Amu Ali, an elderly coffee farmer who lives in the mountain region of northwest Yemen. Taha’s videos show daily life in a region still untouched by war. Instead, Taha focuses on more interpersonal matters like the relationship between men and women and the beauty of Yemen’s natural landscape.
One sequence shows the old man’s weathered face in a car’s passenger-side rear-view mirror.
“We’re going to get you married, Amu Ali!” a voice says in Arabic, as the car rumbling down the side of a mountain road.
“Who?” the old man asks.
“You!”
Through his breathtaking shots of undisturbed mountains, Taha seeks to remind his audience that this land has and will survive any man-made conflict.
“On Echoes of Invisible Hearts” is up at Station Beirut through May 5.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
