From the Orient Le Jour, Beirut.
Maisons beyrouthines et derviches tourneurs à la galerie La Vitrine
EXPOSITION La maison rose, le palais Sursock, les immeubles des années vingt... D'un pinceau frais, Rana Chalabi immortalise ces charmants visages du Beyrouth d'antan. Elle transpose aussi, à l'encre et au fusain, le mouvement des derviches tourneurs:
Architecte de formation, Rana Chalabi vit actuellement au Caire, mais fait régulièrement des crochets à Beyrouth, où elle est née en 1958. Elle y a grandi, étudié et décroché son diplôme à l'AUB. C'est dire si elle connaît bien la capitale libanaise d'avant-guerre. Période au cours de laquelle les maisons traditionnelles et les bâtiments anciens avaient encore leur place dans le paysage urbain.
Aujourd'hui, alors que ces anciennes bâtisses disparaissent à tour de bras - de grues! -, grignotées par un hideux béton roi, la seule œuvre de préservation du Beyrouth d'antan est celle que des artistes, comme Rana Chalabi, entreprennent... sur toile.
Munie de ses pinceaux et de sa palette de couleurs vives et gaies, cette peintre immortalise ainsi, au gré de ses virées dans les différents quartiers beyrouthins, ce qui reste de maisons en pierres de taille et à tuiles rouges, d'immeubles à balcons ouvragés et de belles demeures praticiennes, entourées de coins de jardins...Sauf, qu'inspirée sans doute par son attachement à ce qui fût la ville de la Dolce Vita orientale, elle prend soin de représenter ces charmants îlots du passé hors de leur contexte actuel qui, malheureusement, trop souvent dépare leur beauté surannée. Exposées jusqu'au 5 juin à la galerie La Vitrine, la vingtaine d'aquarelles sur ce thème, que Rana Chalabi a peintes ces deux dernières années, offrent donc aux visiteurs une galerie de portraits de ces belles... architectures. Sauf que de nos jours, même la nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était. Car plutôt que de baigner ses compositions d'un halo sépia ou de couleurs passées, l'artiste a préféré évoquer avec fraîcheur, d'un pinceau trempé dans des tonalités claires et guillerettes, ces heureux lieux du passé. Dans un autre registre, mais avec une belle délicatesse de traits mixée d'une habileté dans le tracé, l'artiste s'adonne à un autre de ses thèmes de prédilection : l'évocation du tournoiement des derviches tourneurs. À coups de rainures épurées à l'encre et au fusain, des mouvements de groupe de ces danseurs mystiques...Ou encore, à l'encre, au fusain et à l'aquarelle, des portraits de derviches tourbillonnant en solo.
Signalons enfin que Rana Chalabi a à son actif plusieurs expositions à travers le monde: du Caire, où elle avait présenté en 2003 des aquarelles intitulées Dans les pas de David Roberts à Michigan, aux USA, où elle exposait, en 2006, ses Anciens sites égyptiens toujours à l'aquarelle, mais encore Londres, où elle participait au Covent Garden, en 2004, à un accrochage de calligraphies, cette artiste diffuse partout la beauté du patrimoine oriental qu'elle revisite de son pinceau.
From the Agenda Culturel in Beirut
AN ARTIST IN OUR MIDST
I'm always amazed by the talent you stumble upon in Lebanon. About a year ago my friends and I were touring Gemmayze’s art galleries, checking the new exhibits. I asked Rana Chalabi, who happened to join us that day, what she did for a living. She quietly said she was an artist. She invited us to see her works. We soon realized that Rana Chalabi was a renowned artist whose works are exhibited across Paris, Vienna, Beirut, USA and Tokyo.
Born to a Syrian Father and a Turkish Mother, Rana has been painting ever since she was a child. She won an art competition at the age of 11. At the Lycee, her mentor was Simone Baltaxe Martayan, although she never took any formal art classes. She studied archeology at AUB. And after graduating, she moved to Egypt with her husband, Lammert Holdijk, an expert in Sufism and a Sufist. While he taught at AUC, Rana studied with the famous Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathi doing watercolor renderings. She did her Masters in Islamic Art and Architecture at AUC. From then on, Rana devotes herself entirely to painting.
Today, she is an established artist who spends her time between Beirut and Cairo painting and exhibiting in various galleries around the world. “After spending over 30 years in Egypt, I have always kept Lebanon in my heart and will now be dividing my time between Lebanon and Egypt.” “
Her art work”, according to her bio, “reflects her varied interests but is dominated by her interest in movement both physical and spiritual. Her Islamic art and architecture… can be seen in her watercolors of the old city of Cairo, as well as the architectural landscapes of the oases. Sufism is her abiding love and her dervishes and dancers reflect that passion. The minimalism of Zen and the artistry of Arabic calligraphy combine in her Zen Sufi prints. Her houseboat studio on the Nile contains examples of other broad and varied expressions of her art including portraits, sculptures, and Pharaonic collages.”
When asked what she wants viewers to see in her work, she told me, “[I] strive to convey the beauty I see manifested in numerous themes, and expressions, be they watercolors of landscapes, architectural cityscapes, dancers, dervishes, flowers, daily scenes from life. So too my art, is an attempt to convey that spirituality and beauty, be it through the ecstatic whirling of dervishes or the zen-like space created by calligraphy. For example, my five exhibits in Japan have often been expressions of this synthesis whether it is of dervishes, flowers, or Arabic calligraphy in the Japanese sumi-e style.”
In Cairo, she is well-known for her dervishes which seem to twirl with a few of her brushstrokes. If you visit the Four Seasons Cairo, you can see her landscape mural on display in the lobby. A friend, Ian Watson, asked her to illustrate his book, The Tao of Homeopathy, which was well received in Japan, where people loved Rana’s combining Japanese sumi style and Arabic calligraphy.
“These calligraphies were developed out of my illustrations… in which I was able to combine my spiritual interests and my art, in the context of alternative medicine. A woman in Japan, who bought one of my calligraphies of the Arabic letter “he” (the letter at the end of the word Allah, and which has rich meaning in Sufism as the breath of God), said that she was going to decorate her home around this letter!”
When asked why she paints, she said, “For me, painting is like breathing; it is so natural you sometimes don’t notice it and yet it also sustains and nourishes you on all levels. If I can convey that sense of wonder and beauty in my work, change the way you see the world, yourself, and see the underlying symmetry and marvel at its fleeting perfection, then I am happy, for a moment, until I experience the desire again. The whole concept of how I approach my art… the theme that runs throughout my work is expressed in a text that often accompanies my exhibits. Art-making is born, at least in part, in some kind of wish - for the ambering experience against time’s dissolution, for the creation or expression of beauty, for the discoveries or display of talent or of emotional, intellectual, or spiritual understanding. Art-making, adding something to things as they are must be placed in the world of desire. Beneath the serene artistic surface is a rapacity: like the Greek god Hermes inventing the first musical instrument for the bones and intestines of a stolen cow, the artist is in some aspects a hunter and a thief-to make art, you must want.’’
’’Yet the work of art completely counterbalances attachment. It is done. The artist lets it drop and walks away, and the painting or photograph, the sculpture or poem with which the artist has been so fiercely engaged, lets her or him go. It is the same for the viewer; the listener - great art takes us utterly, changes us utterly, and then restores us to the condition of fundamental realization: we are as we are the world as it is… an intimate thusness. In this way, any work of art is the Zen master’s ink-brushed circle-emptiness and form embrace, made visible in all of its beginning less and endless parts’. Jane Hirshfield, ‘Six Small Meditations on Desire.’ Tricycle, summer 2004
At the beginning of the summer, Rana left to Egypt and was preparing an exhibit for Japan. I asked if she was having an exhibit in Beirut soon. “Although I am very busy with several exhibits every year, I am looking forward to holding an exhibit in Beirut soon”. I look forward to seeing her exhibit in Lebanon soon!