Randa Mirza

 

 

Parallel Universes

We view the horrors that take place throughout the world on a daily basis and our knowledge of what is happening makes us responsible for our ignorance, our passivity and our indifference. And yet, our ultimate response is a floating feeling of total incapacity. How can we live in a world where daily disasters are continuously broadcast? What responsibility do we bear for the availability of such knowledge? Do we enjoy observing the 'pain of others' from a position removed in time and space? What is being communicated and what is not being transmitted? Are armed conflicts a new source of entertainment? Why and how do the media participate in this paradox? And what is so exotic about war, anyway? Looking at this work makes us watch ourselves watching. Regardless of the work's context and through its aesthetic quest, it calls on our emotions and inner contradictions. It wants to reveal the absurdity of human existence in this world that we're sharing. Text by Randa Mirza

 

 

 

	abandoned rooms, 2005 - 2007
Untitled (Black room)	Untitled (Indigo room)	Untitled (Pink room)	Untitled (Censorship)

	abandoned rooms, 2005 - 2007
Untitled (Black room)	Untitled (Indigo room)	Untitled (Pink room)	Untitled (Censorship)

 

	abandoned rooms details, 2005 - 2007
Untitled (Room 001)	Untitled (Room 002)	Untitled (Room 007)

Untitled (Room 021)

Untitled (Room 022)

Untitled (Room 023)

Untitled (Room 025)

Untitled (Room 038)

Untitled (Room 059)

Untitled (Room 074)

Untitled (Room 080)

Untitled (Room 085)

Untitled (Room 088)

Untitled (Room 090)

Untitled (Room 096)

Abandoned Rooms is a photography series about fragmented lives, lives that are stuck between the reality of the changeover and the haunting ghost of the war. They speak of the past in the present, of presence in absence, of death and survival, of what is forgotten and what lingers, of what rots and is transformed in a country that keeps rising from its ruins. During what is commonly known as the years of the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990), waves of civilian migrants fleeing their devastated regions sheltered in various blocks of flats, rubble, abandoned apartments and chalets, luxurious villas, hotels and summer houses. The various Lebanese militias and the foreign armies also took over these constructions and turned them into housings or headquarters. Since the “ civil war ” ended in 1990, and until the foreign armies recently withdrew from the Lebanese territories (year 2000 for Israel and 2005 for Syria), most of these places were gradually being returned to their original owners. Despite the reconstruction frenzy that has gripped the country, strongly encouraged by the “post war” governments, many of these buildings dotted across Lebanon are actually in ruins… They form the remains and traces of the war: scattered holes in the collective memory. Often unnoticed by Lebanese, they are an integral part of the urban landscape, standing like an abutment of the past against a period both stagnant and present, a reminder of an overhanging war. The photographed rooms, with their multiple identities and histories, are the documents of memory. I had the urge to revisit them; I entered these wrecks with a need entwined with the fear of returning to places steeped in the past. Stacks of lives awaited in the photographed rooms. Passing through these infinite spaces reveals the adventure and risk of a forced encounter with my memory. In the destitution of what remains, repressed secrets rear up: present and imaginary dusts. Text by Randa Mirza The 4 “ Untitled rooms ” won the gold medal price during the 5th francophone games in Niger (Dec 2005). The “ Details series ” was rewarded at the Arles photography festival the NO LIMIT award on the 8th of July 2006, four days before the latest destruction of Lebanon by the IDF (Israel Defence force) in what has been lately titled the July’s war 2006.