Born in Kinshasa in 1989, Alaa Mansour is a Lebanese research-based artist and filmmaker, currently working between Paris and Beirut. Her debut documentary film Aïnata (2018), shot in south Lebanon, is a seminal work nurturing her interest in archives.
Calling upon a speculative archeology, her work questions the power of images and their relation to History, exploring the construction of individual narratives in the midst of collective socio-political mythologies.
Instagram : @alaa______ma
Untitled 1, And Their Eyes were Silent (2019, Lebanon) Over the years I went out on my balcony in south suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, to capture the daily scenery. This vantage position was the only possible point of view since it’s forbidden to capture images on the streets without permission. Silent eyes, eyes that conceal what’s drifting out of sight, what remains buried. Blacked eyes, washed eyes, eyes blinded by the sun, those which persistently stay mute. To reach, to touch, to gouge them out. Disaster stirs up and overcomes us. In the streets, ghosts come tumbling out. They see what’s invisible. They are the invisible. Up in my tower, my gaze delves into the abysmal asphalt. Extra-ordinary. The daily life becomes an exercise in style. The same story coming back ; another story starting over. Acephalous, amnesic, memory mends itself. Countless holes crippling the head, still the gesture remains. That very one which resists and endures through each intermission. The image. A death dance. A relic. An Atlas of the ordinary carving out singular bodies and revolutionary gestures.