Rola Khayyat
Bio: Rola Khayyat is a Lebanese photographer. She holds a BA in History from the American University of Beirut, and a degree in Intensive Drawing from the Florence Academy of Art. She has worked on projects with art spaces such as Art Laboratory Berlin, and curated the BEYroute show for the Third Thessoloniki Biennial. Rola’s work explores new dimensions on the representation of war, memory, and identity.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: A collective history is hard to find in post-war Lebanon. While rummaging through the archives of my mother’s photographs, I encountered shards of an empire tucked neatly into a shoebox. Confronted with unrecognizable faces and places within and without the domestic circle, I turned to the backs of the photographs for clues on the storied memories I was experiencing. As I squinted to decipher the text and layered marks scribbled and engraved onto the backs of the photographs, the experience shifted from the visual image to the materiality of the object in the palms of my hands. The life span of the photograph was evident, revealing traces of its production, distribution and reproduction as well as hints to the shifting cultural and social landscape from which it emerged and through which it journeyed. A set of fantastical tales were spun from these few signifying archival marks occupied within the frame of the photograph. The question of how we can begin to decipher the memory of place through photography is at the core of my inquiry. How are the simultaneous landscapes of memory (real or imagined) navigated, and how can their intersections be represented visually?
L to R: Bhamdoun Synagogue (15˝× 15˝, Dry inkjet print from 6˝× 6˝ negative, 2016); Bhamdoun 1953 (4˝× 6˝, Back of old analog photo scanned and silk screen printed on paper, 2016)