URBAN ICONS, what’s left
The democracy of the Wall is a cycle of images drawn out of wall posters that, since left outside, got worn out by human and nature’s intervention.
The posters turn into an anthropological gallery, where life and death coexist in cease fire.
The subjects are heterogenous, in a selection that attempts to avoid any moral or political judgment. Many of them are unknown protagonists or historical icons of Lebanese and Palestinian conflicts. There are suicide bombers, political leaders, attack victims, religious leaders, Hezbollah, Christians, fighters and civvies. But not just this, the religious iconography is represented by Virgin Mary portraits that are in places where religion becomes bulwark of fights in which spirituality is often forgotten.
A sequence of Pope John Paul the II renders his well-known head bowed profile, torn by tears.
A series of eight images of Arafat incorporated in one single photo printing shows the political leader disfigured by the elements and by man’s hand.
I thought it would be worth it to represent the compassionate power that the wall gives back to these people after their life as dominators or dominated fighters. Pity donated by time in front of each and everybody’s eyes. A public hallway (the street) where all become equal under the blows of rain, tears and sprays. I wanted to try to show how the concept of the wall, symbol of prevarication and division, could be seen as a vertical support to integration and compassionate sharing in front of death and of the desire to keep the memory.
