WIELS presents for the first time in Belgium an exhibition by Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, who has emerged as one of the most prominent commentators on photography of the Middle East. Zaatari's practice is closely tied to the practice of collecting. Through books, photographic installations, and videos, Zaatari's visual studies reflects on the shifting nature of borders and the production and circulation of images in the political context of the region. Paralleling his long-term engagement with "the state of image making in situations of war", his work looks into notions of surveillance and expressions of masculinity, exploring the way different media apparatuses get employed in the service of power, resistance, and memory. This sensibility was formed in the course of living through fifteen years of war in Lebanon, watching it unfold and recording it as a teenager.

As co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation - an expanding collection of over 600,000 images - Zaatari is deeply invested in examining how photography served to shape notions of aesthetics, postures and social codes, therefore looking at the present through a wealth of past records of vernacular and studio photography from the Middle East. "I do not believe in the neutrality of the archive," Zaatari says. He has spent much of the last decade studying, indexing, and presenting the archive of Studio Sheherazade, established in 1953 by photographer Hashem el Madani in Saida, South Lebanon - Zaatari's city of origin - as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.

Akram Zaatari, born in 1966 and author of more than 40 video works, lives and works in Beirut. Zaatari recently represented Lebanon in the 55th Venice Biennale and partook in dOCUMENTA XIII and Liverpool Biennial (2012), and Istanbul Biennial (2011). His work has been exhibited in and collected by museums all over the world, including at Tate, London; Bristol Museum, Bristol; Centre Pompidou, Paris; SFMOMA, San Francisco; MoMA, New York; Kunstverein, Munich; MUSAC, Léon; and Kunsternes Hus, Oslo.

Curator: Dirk Snauwaert