Rania Stephan
On Never Being Simply One
May 25–August 31, 2016
Marfa’
P.O. Box 11-4496
Beirut
Lebanon
Hours: Tuesday–Friday noon–7pm,
Saturday 2–6pm
T +961(1)571636
info [at] marfaprojects.com
Marfa’ is pleased to announce Rania Stephan‘s first solo exhibition, On Never Being Simply One.
The exhibition is driven by the differences between images, still and moving, the trace of an absence that is originary to those images. Approaching images like an editor—part detective, part cinephile—Stephan investigates how images collide and collude, multiply and subtract.
In her own words: “As an artist-filmmaker-editor, I work with images. I think in images. But mostly, I think about the relation between images, about what happens in-between images. Is it an addition or a collision, or even a lack? How far can the gap between two images stretch in order to open a space for other images to dive in and let the viewer’s imagination enter the narrative? How does one capture these invisible images?”
Produced between 2010 and today, the works that make up On Never Being Simply One fall between two of Stephan’s major film projects—The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosny (2011) and the ongoing Memories for a Private Eye (2015–). They present Stephan’s obsessive examination of the relationships between still and moving images, documentary and fiction, death and presence.
Rania Stephan is a filmmaker and artist based in Beirut.
Stephan graduated with degrees in Cinema Studies from Latrobe University, Melbourne and University of Paris VIII. She has worked as an assistant, cameraperson and editor on numerous films.
Her films, while crossing genres, display a long-running investigation of certain themes, such as the negotiation of personal and public archives, and a focus on what she calls “the archaeology of images, identity, and memory.”
A partial filmography includes train-trains (Where’s the Track?) (1999), Lebanon/War (2006), Damage: for Gaza “The Land of Sad Oranges” (2009), and Samar Yazbek Interviewed (2013). Her first feature-length film, The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2011), won the Artist Prize of the 10th Sharjah Biennale, the 2011 FID Marseille Renaud Victor Prize, and the Best Director award at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Stephan’s work has been shown at MoMA PS1, New York (2012); Home Works, Beirut (2012 & 2015); Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (2014), as well as numerous film festivals.
Stephan’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.
The first part of her trilogy, Memories for a Private Eye, was released in 2015; she is currently working on parts two and three.
The exhibition will be on view throughout August by appointment.
