Best First Solo Exhibitor - 2024

Best First Solo Exhibitor - 2024
Tony Mhanna
Tony Mhanna
Following a tumultuous 15 years of civil strife, Beirut stood as a city fractured by conflict, its urban fabric torn asunder. Bereft of clear victors or vanquished, bereaved of formal reckonings or resolutions, it remained a desolate expanse marked by the vestiges of its rough past – a haunting specter that persists. Before the onset of the war, the face of the city was its astonishing built houses, a testament to its history and influential cultural milieu supported by its diaspora. Within these edifices resided the essence of countless inhabitants, men, women, and children – Lebanese residents now reduced to mere echoes, phantoms, and remnants.

Left broken, chaotic and destroyed, they later became a huge contribution to Beirut’s vintage scene with no other traces but the outlines of both beautiful and agonizing memories. Mhanna herein embarked upon a quest, akin to a spectral pursuit, a narrative of rejuvenation for these beautifully haunted spaces.

The artwork is part of a search mission, a ghost hunt and a story of revival of those beautifully haunted places. It seeks to bring those spirits back into the frame, reviving the energy from their golden days. The delicate fabric resembles the souls of the houses, gently swarming around the inside facades of old buildings. The graceful movement of fabric is their dance. It is the return of life at the heart of their homes – the Lebanese ethos of rootedness and resilience, indomitably asserting its presence against all odds.

Born in Beirut in 1993, Mhanna emerges as an artist-photographer, drawing upon a profound comprehension of art history, harboring a keen interest in design, and architecture. His thematic oeuvre orbits the realms of metamorphosis, regeneration, and transition as he endeavors to explore the interplay of space, natural colors, and ambiance, to exude a sense of harmony, energy, and life.
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