All images: Eivind Lauritzen/Galleri F 15
Jad El Khoury
Healing Blanket – A platform for serendipities
2022
After having used outdoors textile to reactivate and heal accidental war monuments in Beirut, these curtains will appear again in a humbler approach, as a socially engaged, participatory work. This iteration of the curtain’s appearance will invite visitors to go beyond merely observing a curtain hanging in an empty window of an unreachable, abandoned building. Here, the curtain transforms into a picnic blanket placed on the ground, waiting for Galleri F15’s visitors to use. A movable platform of serendipities, to be inaugurated outside in the Baroque Garden in front of the gallery.
For El Khoury, the Healing Blanket comes with a sense of urgency, after coming to the realization that trauma and depression are not conditions exclusive to war-torn countries. The Healing Blanket is an antidote to the white circles in the parks reminding us to remain socially distant during covid, with a scale large enough for different groups to simultaneously share in its multi-patterned space. Placing an emphasis on healing, the blanket will also be activated via an offering of yoga, meditation, and a curated library of self-healing books.
The fabric is weather resistant and will remain outside for the duration of the exhibition. However, the power of the material here lies not in its physicality, but in its relation to how it has been historically used to bring poetry and healing to ruins around the world; it is in the dancing and blessings it has been generating to different cities.
For El Khoury, the Healing Blanket comes with a sense of urgency, after coming to the realization that trauma and depression are not conditions exclusive to war-torn countries. The Healing Blanket is an antidote to the white circles in the parks reminding us to remain socially distant during covid, with a scale large enough for different groups to simultaneously share in its multi-patterned space. Placing an emphasis on healing, the blanket will also be activated via an offering of yoga, meditation, and a curated library of self-healing books.
The fabric is weather resistant and will remain outside for the duration of the exhibition. However, the power of the material here lies not in its physicality, but in its relation to how it has been historically used to bring poetry and healing to ruins around the world; it is in the dancing and blessings it has been generating to different cities.
In El Khoury’s practice, ecological sensitivity, politics, architecture, memory-work, and heritage come together in pursuit of healing. The medium and techniques are constantly metamorphosing in response to the serendipities and contexts he encounters. Always with a sense of urgency and site-specificity, his projects vary from static visual installations to socially engaged practices.
After studying architecture at the Lebanese University and installing public art works around the world, he has been pursuing an MFA in Art and Public Space at the Oslo National Academy of Arts, culminating in the spring of 2022.
www.jadelkhourymaps.cargo
@jadelkhoury.art
After studying architecture at the Lebanese University and installing public art works around the world, he has been pursuing an MFA in Art and Public Space at the Oslo National Academy of Arts, culminating in the spring of 2022.
www.jadelkhourymaps.cargo
@jadelkhoury.art
