CF: We would like to know if in your work you want to show a fact that happened, as in a mere reportage, or do you want to tell something more? What’s your artistic approach on this?

 

CC: The fact that my work is anchored in reality, it doesn’t mean that I give to it a journalistic approach. My work is tied to reality, it is my way of inhabiting the world and learning about its latent or effective instability. Once my photos, regarding the uncrossable boundaries, are exposed, they are not associated with descriptions. Rather than  giving information, I am interested in the fact that in Lebanon History could be constantly written, a History that is made continuously. It is for this reason that I decided to come back to Beirut to live my life. It is not by chance. Lebanon is an epicentre, my personal history is tied to this country.  I was almost born there, I was only a few months old when I arrived in Beirut. 

Even if the immediacy of information is not related to my work, it reaches us consequently. My work can be understood through the experience of current events. This is not surprising if you are living in the Middle East, in Lebanon. That brings you to deal with geopolitics issues. 

I work by different layers. If I represent something directly, in an abstract or figurative way, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that my work is structured on multiple levels. The frontality of the images allows to take a distance from all of that could fall into the narration such as the spectacularity. In this way it is possible to reach the narration of these politics and poetics landscapes. 

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CF: The relationship between life, art, and politics is recurrent in your work. Is your work as an artist a decisive addition to your political struggle or does it remain a “realistic outline” and what would you like to say with your images besides showing political scenarios and local realities?

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CC: The artist Christian Boltansky said: "in each artist's life there is a  first trauma and the work is generated around it." 

War has irremediably marked my life, but if I want to identify my trauma I would recognize it in my forced departure. It happened when I was just a child, but I experienced it just like a real exile. This violent break-up has scarred my life forever. It was like an invisible wall was traced between what was vital for me and myself.

My first artistic gesture would have been to come back to Lebanon at the end of the war. 

I could not conceive to develop artistic projects without living in Lebanon. 

I was totally aware that I wanted to be there when the history was being written, so that my work could be part of this specific historical, political and geopolitical context.

Reality and concrete experiences are evoked in my work, but the poetic and tactile dimension too me they are important too.

I am a visual artist and I am interested in translating things I'm interested in, into something else as an artist can do. My passion for geopolitics is fruitfully related to my artistic practice, it fuels my work which changes formal and factual data in poetic images. 

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CF: Let’s talk about your project “I can’t recall the edges”.

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CC: I started working on this series in 2016. Last photos are dated 2019. I’m going to work on it for a while longer. Will perhaps become something different, we will see it is a work in progress. 

Vacant lots, abandoned sites, ruins left by the war are like urban landscapes that have remained imprinted in my mind since I was a little child. Now I have just memories approximately precise. Memories about photos destroyed by war, fascination for urban spaces in and of transition, territories continuously changing.

First photos of this series were taken in a disputed territory of Beirut. I’m talking about the embankment of the ancient Normandy landfill, situated in front of the sea, in the city centre. Here there are the demolished buildings, destroyed just after the war. In particular, those buildings in the souks of Beirut were used to cover the landfill in a state of emergency, without any planning, but just as an accomplished fact, under the cover of a political and financial scandal. 

These landscapes that I photographed cannot be considered as white page landscapes. They compare an action to the whole. This action can be approximately dense, regarding traces and tendencies of resistance that make it up. 

My work develops thanks to the issues related to the territory and because of the identity and memory traces.

I show spaces in the making. Sometimes they witness the passage of the time and the presence of history. In these territories in continuous  evolution, the  presence of contemporary archaeology talks about untouchable traces that I explore in my photographic work. I show the non-lieu of Beirut as a recurrent motif.

These photographs question the bond between apparences, the landscapes in front of us, what is invisible, the narration of the transformation of these places. The usage of expired films is connected with the process of disappearance of these places. Beirut is a city that is constantly changing. We saw it recently with the explosion of its harbour on 4th august 2020. Thanks to the fragility of the image, the cancellation of the texture, the grains, the colours, these expired films tell us about the vulnerability of the territory, the presence of physical and mental barriers not only in Beirut but in the entire country, the intangible, the uncontrollable. 

In this series there is the idea of vernacular photography that allows the representation of memories, establishing a bond with my childhood pictures.

Nowadays analogue photography dates the picture. Its usage in contemporary projects causes a juxtaposition and a discrepancy between the pictures. It confers a timeless dimension and a mise en abyme of the time.