Tony Chakar

Lebanese architect and writer born in Beirut in 1968. He belongs to a generation of Lebanese artists and thinkers whose primordial themes are war and the post-war, which they view with a critical eye due to their focus on the processes of getting at the historical truth. It can be said that his platform his memory as a performance practice. His work also involves ways of thinking that go beyond than the traditional architectural focus by incorporating literature, philosophy and theory.

He is a contributor to Al Mulhaq, the cultural supplement of the daily newspaper ‘Annahar’, and to several European art journals. Architecture and living conditions in different districts of Beirut are Tony Chakar’s interests, which is why another of his activities is giving Art History and History of Architecture classes at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux arts (Alba).

Exhibitions of his work include, among others: ‘A Retroactive Monument for a Chimerical City’, Ashkal Alwan (Lebanon); ‘Four Cotton Underwear for Tony’, TownHouse Gallery (Egypt); ‘Beirut, the Impossible Portrait’, at the Venice Biennial (Italy); ‘My Neck is Thinner than a Hair’, a lecture-performance with Walid Raad and Bilal Khbeiz conducted in different places around the world; and ‘A Window to the World’ and ‘Sky Over Beirut’ (Walking tours of the city), in Ashkal Alwan (Lebanon).

“An Endless Quick Nightmare” is the name of Chakar’s project for MDE11, which consists of a series of text-images. Images of the past burst into our present in the evanescent form of text- images, says this architect and writer, adding that it is possible to rescue these images if they are taken advantage of before they disappear in time. Text-images are the manifestation of the ghosts of the past (“memory”) in our world, “in the same way that the old Christian icons were the manifestation of the holy in the world of the profane.”

Links of interest
Catastrophic Space
‘Project Space: Tony Chakar’. Published in Artreview.com
‘Touched Talks: Tony Chakar’
No official Tony Chakar Facebook fan page