ANTWERP.- After an initial collaboration in the context of our OFF ROAD II show in 2021, Zeno X Gallery will present a first solo exhibition in the autumn of 2022 at the gallery.

Mounira Al Solh, born in 1978 in Beirut (LB), lives and works in The Netherlands and Lebanon.

Mounira Al Solh’s paintings, drawings, performances, textiles, videos and installations narrate the histories and experiences of her broad family and community. These personal stories are often closely interwoven with the political: Al Solh’s work reflects on themes such as migration, identity, language, trauma and feminism. Many of her projects are rooted in a collaborative and socially engaged practice.

Mounira Al Solh attempts to visualise the oral histories of (displaced) individuals. The ongoing portrait series ‘I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous’ originated through numerous conversations with Middle Eastern and North African migrants. Part of this series was on view at the Venice Biennale of 2015, documenta 14 and The Art Institute of Chicago.

For other projects Al Solh invites women from different backgrounds to engage with her practice through manual labour or personal narratives, allowing their traditions and stories to reflect in the work. The embroidered tent currently on view in her solo show at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, originated from a collaboration with thirty women of different origins and refers to the typical imperial tents from 19th century Iran. For the bed-tent ‘Sperveri’, commissioned by documenta 14 in Athens, Mounira Al Solh studied Greek traditional embroideries which carry along traces of displacement throughout the centuries.

Work by Mounira Al Solh will feature in the gallery’s upcoming Art Basel 2022 presentation. The painting ‘Buried Alive (Dead with Awakened Eyes)’ was created in the aftermath of the Beirut explosion in 2020 but is also a dedication to unjustly imprisoned Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian women.

Al Solh studied painting at the University of Beirut and fine arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She currently has a solo show at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead as well as at the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück.

Previously she has had solo exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2020), the Musée National Pablo Picasso in Vallauris (2020), The Art Institute of Chicago (2018), the Mathaf in Doha (2018), Alt Art Space in Istanbul (2016), KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2014), the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow (2013), Art in General in New York (2012) and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (2011). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at WIELS in Brussels (2020), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2020), Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2020), Carré d’Art - Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes (2018), documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017), the 56th Venice Biennial (2015), the New Museum in New York (2014), Tate Modern in London (2011) and the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009).