We Are Stardust: Majlis Talks Session #1

Stéphanie Saadé’s presentation will bring us closer to her own sweat and skin cells, left on her phone’s touch screen, as the subjects of Digiprints photographs. Recent years attest to the experience of hardships via microorganisms and viruses. The role of human beings in the grand scheme has become increasingly fragile and proposals of collaboration on a micro level continues to come to the forefront. Saadé investigates literal and metaphorical interpretations by looking at dust and bacteria and her focused attention and considerations on scale. In this new world it is a threat to not notice tiny details. What does it mean to have the skill of noticing small things to survive? How do we trust what we cannot see with the naked eye?

About:

Stéphanie Saadé was born in 1983 in Lebanon. She lives and works in Paris and Beirut. She graduated in Fine Arts from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris and was an artist in residence at Van Eyck, Maastricht and Cité des arts, Paris. She is one of the four artists selected to be part of Centre Pompidou Paris artist residence program Accélérations (2022.23), curated by Michel Gauthier and in partnership with BNP Paribas Banque privée.

The work of Stéphanie Saadé develops a language of suggestion, playing with poetics and metaphor. She shares clues, signs, imageless and occasionally silent trails with us, which interact like the words of a single sentence. It is for the viewer to decipher them, as would an archaeologist faced with traces, fossils, and fragments. This enigmatic quality often stems from the artist’s own experience. In her oeuvre, personal experience is invoked exclusively as a universal subject.

Saadé had solo exhibitions at Centre Pasquart, Biel, Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux, Maison Salvan, Labège and Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam as well as a duo exhibition at Marres, Maastricht. Her work was exhibited collectively at Sharjah Biennal 13 / Punta della Dogana, Venice / MAXXI, Rome / MOCA Toronto / MuHKA, Antwerp / Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris / Jameel Art Center, Dubai / MISK Art Institute, Ryadh / Saudi Art Council, Jeddah / Home Works 7, Beirut / La Criée, Rennes / National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík / Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo / Ystad Konstmuseum, Ystad / Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, New York / Mosaic Rooms, London / Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon.

Her first monograph Building A Home With Time was published following her solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland.

Her works are in the collections of Centre Pompidou Paris, CNAP Paris, MAXXI, Rome, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, FMAC Paris, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah and Saradar Foundation, Lebanon.

Credit for the image:

Digiprint, 29-11-2018, inkjet print on paper, 130 x 70 cm. / The mobile phone screen of the artist is photographed. The fingerprints left on the smooth surface of the phone are captured.