Talk

Straighten your screws, the making of a queer imaginary

Thursday 07 Nov 2024 from 7pm to 8:30pm

Free upon registration

Book

Document de recherche pour l’exposition 'Soft Skills', 16 octobre - 17 novembre 2024, Lafayette Anticipations © Mohamad Abdouni, 2024

A discussion with Mohamad Abdouni, about the publication 'Soft Skills - How to Properly Sit on a Chair'.

Mohamad Abdouni is dedicated to preserve marginal histories in Lebanon and the Middle East. With Soft Skills, his latest solo exhibition, the artist pursues this research, through an introspective approach this time.

In conversation with the curator of the exhibition, Caroline Honorien, Mohamad Abdouni discusses this project, as well as the accompanying edition. Entitled 'Soft Skills - How to Properly Sit on a Chair', the book breaks down the artist's personal and family memories, as well as the materials used to create the show.
Mohamad Abdouni is an artist, photographer, filmmaker and curator based between Beirut and Istanbul. He is also Editor in-Chief and Creative Director of COLD CUTS magazine, the photo journal exploring queer cultures in the SWANA region.

His work has been exhibited namely at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the FOAM Gallery in Amsterdam, L’Institut du Monde Arab, Art Basel by Paris+ and the Institute of Islamic Cultures in Paris, Patel Brown in Toronto, and the Lyon Biennale amongst others. 

Mohamad’s films have been screened and awarded at festivals such as Eyes Wide Open and the Leeds Queer Film Festival in the UK, IQMF in Amsterdam, The Brooklyn Museum and Woodbury LGBTQ Film Festival in the US, and Pink Apple Schwullesbisches Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in Switzerland to name a few. 

Commercially, he has shot for and directed narrative fashion films and music videos with the likes of Gucci, Vogue US, Vogue Italia, Burberry, Puma, The New York Times, Slate, Fendi, Farfetch, GQ, King Kong, Dazed, Another, Nowness, Vice UK and L’officiel. 

His personal endeavors tend to focus on the untold stories of Beirut and uncovering the rich yet eradicated queer histories of the Arab-speaking region through several documentaries and photo stories that have been featured in publications from A24, Telerama, Foam Magazine, Tetu, New Queer Photography, Kaleidoscope, i-D, Photoworks, The Guardian, Facebook and more. 

As of 2019, he has dedicated his time to working on what is arguably the first archive of trans* histories in an Arab country, a project entitled Treat Me Like Your Mother: Trans* Histories From Beirut’s Forgotten Past. The collection resides safely today at the Arab Image Foundation. 

Recently, he’s been working on a long-term project that delves deeper into the town he grew up in, in the Bekaa of Lebanon bordering with Syria, presenting questions around the ideals of masculinity that he was meant to embody, and the strains that such expectations can have on interfamilial relationships.