LUXEMBOURG.- Introducing A Model, Rayyane Tabet (b. 1983, Ashqout, Lebanon) was invited to conceive a site-specific project for the Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion. An architect by training, the artist attaches great importance to the context in which his projects are embedded. His installations consider the historical framework of the architecture of the museum, revealing its particularities alongside its contradictions.

Tabet’s body of work builds upon the analysis of sociocultural contexts, combining historical and subjective memory to offer an alternative reading to the official narrative of his object of study and open it up to new meanings. For the pavilion, the artist devised Trilogy, an installation that unfolds around pivotal moments of contemporary and Luxembourg history in dialogue with his personal memory.

This installation includes Sanatorium Paimio (bedroom furniture), a central work of the Mudam Collection conceived by architect Alvar Aalto between 1930 and 1933. Emblematic of functionalist research and humanist thinking, Aalto designed the bedroom furniture to contribute to well-being and recovery.

Transforming the pavilion’s walkway, Tabet installs translucent curtains originating from his grandparents’ 1950s apartment in Beirut. The artist highlights the signature architectural style of its architect Ieoh Ming Pei, characterised by glass-paned surfaces, as symbolic of openness and an era marked by progress and prosperity by inserting personal memory into Mudam’s building. In contrast, the pavilion’s glass roof panels are covered with a blue film in reference to the camouflage techniques used by residents of Beirut during the 1967 Six-Day War. Rendering Mudam’s interior invisible from above, the artist sets Sanatorium Paimio (bedroom furniture) in an infinite twilight.

Lastly, in the lower floor of the pavilion the artist references the 2020 Beirut explosion, exhibiting a series of jugs made from glass fragments retrieved onsite following the blast, envisioning a symbolic repair.




2023–2024
A Model

For the past two years I have been immersing myself in the latest literature on the museum, its current challenges and possible futures. There is no shortage of interesting new publications on the subject, many of which are interviews with museum directors or architects. However, the arguments can quickly become repetitive, and many of the ideas are no longer new. They tend to be either progressive, conservative or driven by the art market, but they have one thing in common: unanimous commitment to change and a shared sense that the world is radically evolving.

Thinking about the new is inevitably slightly pathetic. Talking about the art world tends to be even more so. The word ‘pathetic’ came to my mind after reading Pathetic Literature by Eileen Myles. A friend gave me this book, which reminded me how pathetic we as people sometimes are. How can we avoid this? How can we talk seriously about what contemporary museums need? I am not trying to minimise the work of museum directors, who are intelligently and carefully coming up with ideas for the museum in a changing society; I am trying to do the same thing right here, right now.

When I read Myles’s book, I was so overwhelmed by theory that I lost sight of what was really at stake. Buzzwords such as diversity, inclusion, sustainability or care haunted me day and night. While in this state of mind, I was pointed to a project from 1968, when Pontus Hultén invited the artist Palle Nielsen to turn Stockholm’s Moderna Museet into a huge playground; I felt relieved to have found something simple and essential. The ingredients for the new museum are play, accessibility, curiosity and fun. I started to breathe again. And by working on the exhibition project A Model, I was able to unburden myself of this weight and return to the basics. What should a museum be about? I would say: art, community, playfulness, fun, progressive thinking – and, above all, artists.

During my research, I came across a quote from James Baldwin: ‘Artists are here to disturb the peace.’ In an age of image and information overload, we need artists more than ever, to help distil ideas visually and conceptually, to disrupt conventional ways of looking at the world and to inspire fresh perspectives. I think it is the artists’ responsibility to make work that questions and subverts received truths.

Rayyane Tabet (b. 1983, Ashqout, Lebanon) has had solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021), Sharjah Art Foundation (2021), Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2020), Parasol Unit Foundation of Contemporary Art, London (2019), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019), Musée du Louvre, Paris (2019), Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes (2018) and at the Kunstverein in Hamburg (2017). He took part in numerous international group shows, among which In the Heart of Another Country: The Diasporic Imagination Rises, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2023), Machinations, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina
Sofía, Madrid, Spain, the Whitney Biennial (2022), the 7th Yokohama Triennial (2020), the 2nd Lahore Biennial (2020), the 21st Sydney Biennial (2018), Manifesta 12 (2018), the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017), the 32nd Sao Paolo Biennial (2016) and the 10th and 12th Sharjah Biennial (2011, 2015). Rayyane Tabet lives and works between Beirut and San Francisco.