Book Launch of Lebanon and the Split of Life: Bearing Witness through the Art of Nabil Kanso

Institute of Arab & Islamic Art (IAIA)
Wednesday, October 30th, 6:00pm
22 Christopher Street, New York, NY 10014

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The Institute of Arab & Islamic Art (IAIA) invites you to join us in celebrating the launch of Lebanon and the Split of Life: Bearing Witness through the Art of Nabil Kanso by Meriam Soltan. The author’s reading and presentation will be followed by a conversation with architect Luna BuGhanem.

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The event—held in conjunction with Endless Night, Nabil Kanso’s first institutional solo exhibit in New York—will trace the life and art of Lebanese-American neo-expressionist, Nabil Kanso (1940–2019). Close readings of the art on show will be offered by the author in real time alongside remarks and reflections on the ways in which Kanso’s oeuvre meets the present moment. Soltan, in conversation with BuGhanem, will chart these readings across multiple spatial and temporal registers. Together, they will emphasize the artist’s work as essential to the theorization of larger traditions of political and protest art.

 

Seating is limited, please RSVP to info@instituteaia.org by Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 if you would like to attend.

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Speakers Bio:

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Meriam Soltan is a writer and architect interested in how political, artistic, and cultural production intersect across the Middle East. She presently edits for Columbia Books on Architecture and the City and is a graduate of both MIT (SMArchS 2022) and AUB (2019). Meriam is the recipient of the MIT Architecture Thesis Award and the Berkeley Essay Prize and has had her writing featured in publications like Postmedieval, Future Anterior, The Funambulist, Rusted Radishes, Thresholds, and Arab Urbansim. She is currently working on a people’s history of South Lebanon.

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Luna BuGhanem is an artist, researcher, and architectural designer based between New York City and Beirut. In her practice, Luna investigates, documents, and represents the intertwinement of travel and the built environment. Her current research develops “diasporic homemaking,” the process through which diaspora members build houses in their homeland while and from abroad or back and forth between locales. Luna is an MIT SMArchS graduate and holds a BArch and a BFA from RISD.