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The War Within the Four Walls

Standing proud despite the visible traces of destruction, beauty still resides in this war torn French Mandate-style building in Lebanon. Artist Nilu Izadi captures this resonating structure, the Yellow House, with a keen eye, while also exuding the childish wonder we all feel when exploring historic buildings, for her upcoming exhibition entitled ‘The Yellow House, Beirut 1924-2010’ to be held at the Total Arts Gallery at The Courtyard.

This historic house is one of many buildings in Lebanon built during the French Mandate period. The construction was commissioned by the Barakat family and was designed by Youssef Aftimos in a way that offered a view onto the street from every room — through windows, verandahs, doorways into windows, beyond and onto the city. The building was affected by the war in 1982 as it is situated on the outskirts of Beirut.

Nilu’s work transports the viewer back in time allowing the subject and the elements around it to be the sole narrator of the story. Her creative eye carries the exhibition and the viewer on three different stages and levels of experience: from a solemn brown beige texturally-scarred building with bullet holes, still holding on to its foundation of inner peace, its walls caressed by a still warm glow resonating from the sun’s natural light, to the more expected darker photographs of the impact of war when inhabitants of the building were not families but, in fact, snipers.

In the third stage, a camera obscura installation by the artist, set up in one of the rooms of the building once occupied by snipers, is left with many bullet holes from which they used to look out from when targeting their opponents. In these photographs, we see a rebirth of life resurfacing on the interior walls. Bursts of new colours and images of the world outside such as clouds moving quietly, new buildings, and people walking are this time brought in to the building, the world looking in rather than one looking out from the building as the snipers once did.

Nilu who is based in London, and who is of Iranian descent, spent three years preparing for the project and describes the experience as humbling and saddening. “The walls of the Yellow House were brought alive for the first time in over 30 years on so many levels. I was humbled and saddened whilst working on this project as spending time in the building scarred by bullets and bearing remnants of the snipers’ stains brought home to me how ironic it is that this house, intentionally built to house families, had ironically become the killers’ cauldron.”

On the inspiration behind the project, she says, “I wanted to bring the present back into a space which had stopped in time, to use a space which still shows the remains of war but which allowed me to make the comparison of the resilience of the human spirit and that life moves on. Using the camera obscura projection, I was able to bring the projections of the front line back into the heart of the sniper’s nest. The same aperture which was caused as a result of war now turned back on itself. The Yellow House brings the present and the past together. Time is merged.”

Nilu will be exploring new and interesting ways of using the camera obscura technique in the context of future projects to come.

This exhibition will be taking place in November in the Total Arts Gallery at The Courtyard, Al Quoz.

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