Paola Yacoub
Colours of Time | 2016
Colored forex classic rigid on PVC white foam board. 35,5 x 45,5 x 2,1 cm (unframed).
The sculpture in bas-relief Colours of Time interprets a motif from a colored archaeological drawing made by the artist during the emergency urban archeological excavation in downtown Beirut in the late 1990s. The sculpture codifies the tangle of several strata: Roman, Byzantine and Hellenistic. A different color is assigned to each one. The stratification extends into an ancestral past, prior to humans, as we move from archeology to geology. Another colored drawing was used as a motif and was reproduced on carpet BEY002, produced by the Manufacture des Gobelins, today on display at the French Embassy in Berlin. As opposed to contemporary presentism, Colours of Time expresses ground’s depth. Hence the technique of bas-relief, bringing the dialectics of surface and depth. Finally, colors become autonomous in order to constitute an abstraction. It is no longer an archeological document but an abstraction in a documentary style. Colours of Time was realized on the occasion of Taipei Biennal, Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future, Taipei, Taiwan (2016-2017).
Reference PY-ISO-2016-A
Biography of the artist
Born in Beirut, Lebanon. 1966
Works and Lives in Berlin
Paola Yacoub studied at the Beirut Academy of Fine Arts, and graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in 1993. She worked at the Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient (IFAPO) in charge of the excavation’s drawings in downtown Beirut from 1995 to 1999. She exhibited her project Affects (1998) at Univerzitav Ljubljana’s gallery. She developed her artistic production in Beirut in 2000 and started a collaboration with Michel Lasserre. In 2001 and 2003 they were invited at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, and in 2004/2005, they received the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) artist’s program fellowship. Since this residency, Paola Yacoub has been living and working in Berlin and Beirut.
Paola Yacoub’s numerous exhibitions include Stand der Dinge at the KW Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2000); the Venice Biennial (2000 & 2003); the Busan Korea Biennial (2004); After the fact, the 1st Berlin Photography Festival, Martin-Gropius-Bau (2005); the Gwangju Biennial (2006); the Thessaloniki Biennale (2007); Shenzhen fast food, Beautiful Heart at OCAT, Shenzhen, China and Art Laboratory Berlin; the Tirana Biennial (2009); GLÜCK happens... at the Städtische Galerie Erlangen (2010).
For the Museion collection and opening exhibition Peripheral vision and collective body (2008), she produced the work Gio Ponti, Paradiso Del Cevedale. Her works are in a number of public collections including FNAC, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; FRAC Poitoux- Charentes; Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine/Mamco, Geneva among others.
Her photo-essays in collaboration with Michel Lasserre were anthologized in the publication 'Beirut is a Magnificent City: Synoptic Tables', published by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2003) on the occasion of Contemporary Arab Representations, curated by Catherine David at the Barcelona Foundation, Witte de With, Rotterdam and BildMuseet, Umea.
Yacoub has directed numerous workshops in European and American universities.
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