For the past 30 years, Berlin-based Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué has been creating numerous performances, video works and lectures that radically critique the chaos and historical vacuum of today’s Middle Eastern Arab world. His works, which take place on the boundaries between fiction and truth, communal history and personal anecdote, have been presented at festivals such as Documenta 13 and the Munich Kammerspiele as well as major international theaters and museums around the world. Mroué has given six performances in Japan since his first visit in 2004, including his major works Biokhraphia (2002), How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fool’s Joke (2007), and Ode To Joy (2015).

For the Aichi Triennale 2022, Mroué takes inspiration from the theme “STILL ALIVE” to present a daring recreation of his masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Representation (2005), which itself engages with the history of performance art. Set on an artless stage, the performer opens a book on the history of performance art and transforms into the figures who defined its pages, among them legends like Valerie Export, Marina Abramovic and Chris Burden. However, the parts supposed to describe the self-harming actions from the history of body art are intertwined with words about the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990, blurring the extent of the artist’s own involvement in the text. Further, Mroué weaves in a narrative about the perpetrator of a mass murder that took place in Beirut in 2002. As this historical reenactment ironically and fictionally intersects the history of performance art with the history of contemporary Lebanon through the medium of violence, we as the audience cannot help but listen, watch, and be shaken.

Selected Works & Awards

2019

Borborygmus, Home Works Forum 8, Beirut, Lebanon

2012

dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany

2009

Photo-Romance, Festival d’Avignon, Avignon, France

2007

How Nancy Wished That Everything What happened to April Fool’s Joke, Tokyo International Arts Festival, Tokyo, Japan

2002

Biokhraphia, Beirut, Lebanon

• Who’s Afraid of Representation?, 2005
• Photo: Houssam Mchaiemch