Tania El Khoury is an artist of the archive, a scholar whose work navigates the intersections of human rights and performance. Currently a sabbatical resident in Beirut, El Khoury—a Bard College professor and Creative Capital Award winner—finds herself documenting a city under renewed siege. The recent escalation of conflict, including the devastating “Black Wednesday” strikes that paralyzed the capital in April, has once again turned her focus to the fragile systems that define Lebanese life.
Her interactive piece, *The Search for Power*, serves as a bridge between personal history and systemic critique. The performance is rooted in a 2016 blackout that interrupted her own wedding in Beirut. What began as a domestic frustration evolved into a collaborative research project with her husband, historian Ziad Abu-Rish, as they attempted to trace the provenance of the darkness that stalled their celebration. It is a study of how infrastructure—or the lack thereof—shapes the private lives of citizens.
The work functions as a form of forensic storytelling, restaging an archival adventure to expose the political failures of the state. In El Khoury’s hands, the erratic behavior of the power grid becomes a metaphor for the broader instability of the region. By documenting these failures, she practices a form of “revenge art”—reclaiming the narrative of a broken system through the meticulous preservation of the moments it failed to function.
With reporting from Hyperallergic.
Source · Hyperallergic
