Annabel Daou
A Year Like Any Other
Annabel Daou , a million protesters take to the streets (january), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
Annabel Daou , a million protesters take to the streets (january), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
Annabel Daou , a million protesters take to the streets (january), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
INQUIRE
Annabel Daou , a million protesters take to the streets (january), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
INQUIREIn these works on paper, the threads of day-to-day life ramify into networks of fleeting moments. The surfaces are fabric-like, dyed in ink, cut, and held together with mending tissue. They are produced through a sequence of dance-like movements in which the paper is sliced through, cut, and reassembled.
Annabel Daou
We wore the year on us. It left traces on the body, notes in the margins of our lives. A few sentences discovered sometime later describe some ordinary or extraordinary event, the sense of the moment, the mood of the time, the time of the year: early spring, that summer, last fall, another winter.
Annabel Daou’s fifth solo exhibition a year like any other at Galerie Tanja Wagner consists out of twelve works on paper and a video work. It is structured around 365 events that occurred somewhere in the world over the course of a year. Together these works chart the body moving through time and grappling with the physical and emotional spaces that constrain it.
In the works on paper, the threads of day-to-day life ramify into networks of fleeting moments. The surfaces are fabric-like, dyed in ink, cut, and held together with mending tissue. The forms and the way in which language hovers around them, allude to Egyptian wall drawings of weeping women, as well as early medical drawings known as “wound men.” They are produced through a sequence of dance-like movements in which the paper is sliced through, pulled apart, and reassembled. The pieces hang in a tenuous balance, suggestive of both fragility and resilience.
Annabel Daou , a circus goes bankrupt (june), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
Annabel Daou , a fragile plant is repotted (november), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
In my paper-works I create a sense of weight while using seemingly insubstantial materials, such as paper and mending tissue. In my audio-based works, I explore shared histories and common language. In my collaborative projects, I focus on the ways in which institutions often exclude the voices of the many.
Annabel Daou
Annabel Daou, a woman is older (september), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
Annabel Daou a woman returns to earth (february), 2021. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
In the video work the body is by turns constricted and set free. The inside becomes outside as the world breaks in through scrims and screens, the piercing sounds of sirens and slashing of helicopter blades. A woman learns to dance a communal dance alone, without the arms of others to hook her arms into, without a lead to follow. Her head is caught. She twists in an awkward breathless attempt to escape.
What remains of a year? Marks on a wall. Fragments of disparate events. Residues of class and power. Whatever is left, whatever we find, becomes the story.
Annabel Daou , a year like any other, 2020, Video still. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
Annabel Daou’s work takes place at the intersection of writing, speech, and nonverbal communication. Her paper-and-tape constructions, sound pieces, and performances explore the language of power and intimacy. Daou was born and raised in Beirut and lives in Brooklyn.
She was a resident at Pollock-Krasner ISCP in New York (2019), at the Brown Foundation Fellows Residency Dora Maar (Ménerbes) (2008), as well as at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Center Residency in New York (2002-2007). Moreover, Daou won the “Biennial Award” of the Cairo Biennale (2010). Selected Solo exhibitions & Performances: I will worry for you (from dusk till dawn) school Wien (2021), Chou Hayda, The National Museum of Beirut (2018), fortune/Meanwhile…History, Global Art Forum, Dubai (2014), Fortune, PS1 MoMA New York (2013). Selected Group exhibitions: Trauma and Response, UTSA Art Gallery San Antonio (2021), On Celestial Bodies, Arter Istanbul (2020), The Naked Truth. A European history, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede (2019), The Living Room UIT (Use It Together), ISCP, Brooklyn, New York (2019), What We Call Love, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015), On the Mark, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (2010).
Annabel Daou , A Year Like Any Other. Installation view at Galerie Tanja Wagner, 2021
Annabel Daou , A Year Like Any Other. Installation view at Galerie Tanja Wagner, 2021