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120
Mounira Al Solh, His Funeral, Our Funeral, Their Funeral, 2023

Chapter: Home of My Eyes - Home and Exile

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War again and again
The Lebanese-Dutch artist Mounira Al Solh grew up in Beirut during the 1980s Lebanese Civil War, emigrated to Damascus, studied art in Beirut and Amsterdam, and now lives in both cities. Her studio was destroyed in the 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut. Bombs have fallen time and again, as they continue to do in the ever-widening conflicts across the Middle East.

A work full of poetry and depth
Al Solh combines drawing, sculpture, video, performance, and installation in her art. She addresses war, violence, and the realities faced by dissidents, refugees, and human rights activists, particularly women in the Arab world. Her work merges biographical and collective experiences into a body of art that is poetic, profound, humorous, and politically resilient. Writing and language play an important role in her practice.

Grief and anger
Her expressive oil painting His Funeral, Our Funeral, Their Funeral tells the story of laying a close friend to rest. Lokman Slim was a Lebanese Shiite publisher, political activist, and commentator, known as a vehement critic of all sectarian parties, and Hezbollah in particular. He was shot and killed in February 2021 while returning from southern Lebanon to his apartment in Beirut. The perpetrators remain completely unpunished. Al Solh, who was in the Netherlands at the time, followed the events closely and began painting in her grief and anger. The work itself is literally a process of mourning. She kept the painting in her studio for two years, continuing to work on it intermittently as she processed the loss of her friend.

Rethinking our history
Because Slim’s mother was Protestant, he was able to be cremated, a practice that is neither common nor widely accepted in Lebanon. He wished for his ashes to be interred in the garden of his Beirut home. In a gesture of great symbolic significance, given the country’s sectarian political system and history of civil war, several Muslim and Christian dignitaries of all denominations prayed at his grave. The central element of the painting consists of gravestones inscribed with the words: “Rethinking Our History,” “Mercy,” “May Our Mother Be Safe,” “Right,” “Coexistence,” “Normality,” “Love,” “Reading,” and “Justice.”

An uncomfortable voice
Mourners, most of whom wear face masks (placing the painting in the context of the pandemic), gather around the grave. Among them is Slim’s wife, dressed entirely in black, towering over the others. Beside her stands his mother, small and dejected. On one side, a veiled woman kneels in prayer, her hands open and her gaze lifted to the sky, while in the lower right corner, a crucified figure appears nonbinary, resembling both a man and a woman. The crosses question the traditional concept of martyrdom, pointing to the fact that Lokman Slim was killed because he refused to remain silent, an uncomfortable voice speaking out against oppression and for freedom of expression.


Audio

Note: The audio transcription is voiced by an AI.

Mounira Al Solh, His Funeral, Our Funeral, Their Funeral, 2023
Oil on canvas
© Mounira Al Solh
Written Art Collection

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