Artists

Simone Fattal

Press release

“Ever since I started sculpting, I have made standing characters. In the beginning, they were small, and gradually grew taller. As soon as I touched clay, I wanted to create characters and therefore, standing men. ... The way they visibly manifested comes from my archaeological background and my deep passion for my country and its history. For me, history begins with Sumer and has never ended. The form is alive for me; there is no point where history stops and changes. It’s a continuous moment.”

Simone Fattal

In her exhibition metaphorS, Simone Fattal presents bodies of work from different periods in her career and in a variety of media, including fired clay and ceramic sculptures, paintings, and collages. With her works, she tells stories of humanity, culture, history, and the present. Conflict, consensus, nature, faith, and trust are central concerns. Despite (or precisely because of) the artist’s nomadic life, her oeuvre is deeply rooted in the millennia-old culture and history of the Middle East—she was raised in Damascus and Beirut—and the epic literature, poetry, archaeology, and landscapes of this region, which is as rich as is riven by strife, are both vital sources of inspiration and central themes. Ancient-looking clay and ceramic sculptures are based on characters from prehistoric narratives like Gilgamesh, Dhat al-Himma, Dionysus, or Adam and Eve. Landscapes are the focus of her mostly abstract paintings, which are inspired by the view of Mount Sannine from Beirut, but also by the gardens of her childhood.