Russian Athlete on Weighing Scale (Naro-Forminsk <70 Kg ) (2021)
Description
Size: 21 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
Medium: Acrylic on scaled 80g paper
Provenance
The artist This artwork is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity
Location
Lebanon
Description
In 2020, Zaatari started to paint a series based on the fragile moments in which an athletes stand on weighing scale to determine the competition category they belong to. These are derived from long sessions made accessible on YouTube. Zaatari picked selectively what he wants to paint in the scene, which often include a jury, a male athlete on a weighing device, a camera and other elements. The series is painted on scaled paper which is normally used in architecture and design.
Akram Zaatari has produced more than fifty films and videos, a dozen books, and countless installations of photographic material, all sharing an interest in writing histories, pursuing a range of interconnected themes, subjects, and practices related to excavation, political resistance, the lives of former militants, the legacy of an exhausted left, the circulation of images in times of war, and the play of tenses inherent to various letters that have been lost, found, buried, discovered, or otherwise delayed in reaching their destinations.Zaatari has played a critical role in developing the formal, intellectual, and institutional infrastructure of Beirut’s contemporary art scene. He was one of a handful of young artists who emerged from the delirious but short-lived era of experimentation in Lebanon’s television industry, which was radically reorganized after the country’s civil war. As a co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, a groundbreaking, artist-driven organization devoted to the research and study of photography in the Arab world, he has made invaluable and uncompromising contributions to the wider discourse on preservation and archival practice. He was part of Documenta13 in 2012 and represented Lebanon at the Venice Biennale in 2013.