AKRAM ZAATARI

Posted on May 22, 2012 by admin

Since the mid 90’s, Akram Zaatari has addressed issue in his work on the importance of images as means of transmitting reality, essentially from the use of photography and video. Zaatari co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with Zeina Arida and photographer Fouad Elkoury in 1997 and started traveling through Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria. During those years he collected numerous photographs of children in different poses with the idea of developing his own project. Zaatari started there his massive work of collecting, studying and archiving the photographic history of the Arab World. Another Resolution (1998) , Zaatari first body of work, is an installation, a dialogue in parallel, between those children photos and the one he  shot using adults  in the same poses. The collection of these gestures permit the artist to investigate the role of body language in relation to the construction of cultural sociological and gender issues. Many other installations and exhibition had followed but generally Zaatari investigates the way television mediates wars and is particularly interested in religious and national resistance movements. The circulation and production of images in the context of today’s geographic division in the Middle East is his prior inspiration. Widely exposed  in biennials, museums venues such as the Centre Pompidou and Muac,  Zaatari’s work  is also part of the permanent collection of Tate Modern  and Thyssen Bornemisza Contemporary.