Rabih Mroué: Again we are defeated
Walker Art Center
December 20, 2018—February 23, 2020

Again we are defeated presents a selection of new works by Rabih Mroué (Lebanon, b. 1967), whose artistic practice spans the disciplines of theater, performance, music, and visual art. Mroué’s work engages with the contemporary politics of the Middle East and the enmeshed history of discord in the region, often drawing from his personal experience of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). In this installation, the Berlin-based artist considers the repeated cycles of violence affecting people of the region by examining his own encounters with the conflict as mediated through the news.

The works on view explore Mroué’s ongoing resistance to ways that images of war are circulated and absorbed by the public. By selectively obscuring content culled from newspapers and engaging with the intimate and meditative act of drawing, the artist offers his own reading of these events and another way of processing the everyday atrocities of war. Mroué has produced some 200 drawings and collages as well as video on the subject, in which he serially tracks the recurring impressions of conflict. When amassed as shown here, the works create an homage to the phantom presence of the dead.

Presented in conjunction with the artist’s lecture-performance Sand in the Eyes and the premiere of Borborygmus, a theater work by Mroué, Lina Majdalanie, and Mazen Kerbaj, as part of the Walker’s Out There series in January 2019.

Rabih Mroué: Again we are defeated is curated by Allie Tepper and Gwenyth Shanks

Related writing:
Life, Death, and the Digestive System: An Interview with Rabih Mroué

Mazen Kerbaj, Lina Majdalanie, and Rabih Mroué: Borborygmus
Walker Art Center, Walker Commission / World Premiere
Jan 11-12, 2019

“[Mroué’s] understanding of what it is to be human, in all of its beauty and ugliness, burns through with an intensity that, despite—or because of—its theatricality, hits the viewer directly in the gut.” —Frieze

Just as Rabih Mroué synthesizes video and audio, acting and projection, art and theater in his performances, so does he interweave history, testimony, and storytelling to destabilize facts and fictions. Born in Beirut, Mroué often draws material for his work from the Lebanese Civil War of the 1990s and contemporary Middle East conflicts. This new dramatic-comic theater piece is created in collaboration with Lebanese actor/writer/director Lina Majdalanie and artist/musician Mazen Kerbaj. Here, the performers’ identities and judgements of one another shift as the taboos, fears, and failures of their lives and countries are laid bare.

Borborygmus is presented in tandem with Roué’s latest cycle of artworks, Again we are defeated on view in Gallery 2. In Arabic with English surtitles. Contains adult content.

Related writing and video:
Testimony for the Living (or: Metabolic Theater), by André Lepecki
Watch: Mazen Kerbaj, Lina Majdalanie, and Rabih Mroué in conversation with Allie Tepper