Lebanon and the Split of Life
Bearing Witness through the Art of Nabil Kanso
This scholarly biography traces the life and art of Lebanese-American neo-expressionist, Nabil Kanso (1940-2019).
It explores key moments across the artist’s transnational career by foregrounding his longest-running, internationally toured exhibition, the Journey of Art for Peace (1985-1993). More specifically, it traces the historical trajectory of his 10’ × 28’ mural-scale painting, Lebanon, from the circumstances of its production at the height of the Lebanese Civil War in 1983, through its short-lived exhibition history with the Split of Life series in the few years that followed.
The book scaffolds an understanding of the artist as an activist and works toward offering distinctly spatial readings of his painterly practice, of which the act of bearing witness is highlighted as permeating the entirety of his oeuvre. It concludes with a contemporary recontextualisation of Lebanon in the country’s current social, political, and cultural climate, and emphasises the artist’s work as essential to the theorisation of larger traditions of political and protest art.
Meriam Soltan is a writer and editor interested in the design of fictions and how they are manifested in various contexts politically, culturally, and otherwise.
