ZENA EL-KHALIL

 

Zena el-Khalil, born in 1976, is a painter and an installation and performance artist. Personal and intimate, her work focuses on issues of life, war, love, family and religion.

Her work has been shown in the United States, Lebanon, Japan, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. Zena is the co-founder and director of xanadu* an artists space/ collective in New York City and al-jisser that both actively promote young and lesser known Arab artists. Dedicated to her environment, she also is an activist with Greenpeace in Beirut.

____________________________________

Artist Statement:

I was born in war.
Everything around me now is war.
War has always been.
I cannot remember a time when there was no war.

If it wasn't on TV, it was in my soul. It was in my ears on Sunday nights when we used to call Teta in Beirut... across the Sahara, my ears picked up the crackling of the telephone line, the apprehension in the voices, the sporadic interruptions of white noise. It was under my skin as I watched hungry African eyes stare at me in mystification as I rode to school in my air-conditioned car. It was in my tears, when I was rejected by the high school blond at the high school dance in the European country I was in. It was in my heart when I came to my native land and watched it repeat it's same mistakes, over and over again.

In the beginning I was creating so that people would remember. But now, I have to be honest with myself; I am caught up in existential unrest and I find myself creating these images and forms because I cannot physically do anything else. It is no longer about right and wrong. It is not an intellectual debate. It is a creative offering I make to help maintain balance and order in the world around me. Our beliefs create the reality we experience; and only one's own personal experience offers the ultimate criterion for truth. Because truth is beauty, every form of creative invention is evidence that a person is spiritually alive. It is a valid human experience; a true moment, a word, a sound, an act, a sculpture- all the process of being alive; all the affirmation of existence. All spiritual. All holy. Every act we do or word we utter, we are absolutely responsible for. We are absolutely responsible for being alive. We are absolutely responsible for our lives, because we just are. I am and I am grateful for, only being, a fragment in the cosmos of things... the great unbendable universe.

The deeper I look into myself, the more I find that I am connected to something much greater. And this comforts me... knowing that everything I feel or make is a catalyst in someone else's mind. And the more I let go to experience these beliefs, the closer I become to you. We are one, without being numerical.

By painting and sculpting these images, I am fighting for life. I am fighting for your life. I am fighting for my life.

 

Retour